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Prince Harry faces millions of dollars in damages as he returns to court this week for the third and final chapter, which begins on Monday. British Tabloids.
The Duke of Sussex is the main litigant in the case, which is filled with high-profile plaintiffs accusing publishers daily mail Invading their privacy by using illegal information gathering tactics to spy on them for sensational headlines.
Harry, Elton John, actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost are among seven people who have accused Associated Press of hiring private investigators to bug their cars, access their private records and tap their phones.
The publisher denies the accusations and calls them ridiculous.
judged on LondonThe High Court is expected to last nine weeks, with Prince Harry returning to the witness box for the second time since making history in 2023 when he became the first senior member of the royal family to testify in more than a century.
prince and publisher
The case is part of a widespread phone-hacking scandal. In that scandal, some reporters began intercepting voicemails in the early 2000s and continued to do so for more than a decade.
Harry won a court ruling in 2023 condemning “pervasive and habitual” phone hacking by the publisher of the Daily Mirror. Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship British tabloid made an unprecedented apology for years of intrusion into his life and agreed to pay a hefty sum to settle his privacy-invasion lawsuit.
Harry’s self-professed mission to reform the media is more personal, going far beyond the headlines that seek to chronicle the ups and downs of his party-boy youth and love.
He holds the media responsible for his mother’s death dianaIn 1997, he was killed in a car accident while being chased by paparazzi in Paris. He also accused them of continuing to attack his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, which led to them leaving royal life and moving to the United States in 2020.
Repair royal rift
The trial comes as Harry attempts to repair damaged relationships with his family since moving to the United States, only to have them destroyed by writing a hit 2023 memoir, “Backup,” and airing other family grievances in a Netflix series.
Cold relationship with father, the king charles iiiThe pair had tea together last fall when Harry was in town for the last time, and things seemed to have softened since then.
But this reunion seems unlikely.
The start of the trial coincides with Charles’ trip to Scotland and Harry’s visit is expected to be limited to the start of the trial and his early testimony.
Victory before trial
The case against the Daily Mail was filed in 2022 and has been the subject of several contentious hearings that have resulted in claims of victory by both sides.
Attorneys for the AP argued that the case should be dismissed because the claims, as far back as 1993, were filed too late. But Judge Matthew Nicklin said in a ruling that the cases had “a real prospect of success”, saying the newspapers had “failed to deliver the ‘fatal blow’ to the allegations”.
In the same ruling, Nicklin handed the Mail a victory, saying Harry and others could not use records purportedly showing payments made by the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday to private investigators because they were secretly disclosed as part of a government phone-hacking investigation.
But Harry’s lawyers later obtained permission from British government officials to use the documents.
Private detectives gave conflicting accounts
A private investigator whose name appeared on a sworn statement backing Harry and the celebrities’ claims has submitted another denying he had spied on them.
At an early hearing in the case, lawyer David Sherborne said his client had no idea he was a victim of phone hacking until Gavin Burrows and other investigators came forward in 2021 to “do the right thing” and help those he targeted.
Burrows said he “must have done hundreds of jobs” for the Daily Mail between 2000 and 2005, and that Harry, John and husband David Furnish, Hurley and Frost were “just a few of my targets”.
But he has since signed another statement saying he was not employed by the AP to do any illegal work.
It’s unclear what impact his conflicting comments will have on the case.
Other claimants are anti-racism campaigner Doreen Lawrence and former politician Simon Hughes.