London, UK:

Prince Harry’s lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid publisher over alleged illegal gathering of information could go to trial next year, a British judge ruled on Friday.

Prince Harry, 39, claimed in one of several accusations leveled against the British newspaper publisher that he was repeatedly targeted by journalists and private investigators working for the Sun tabloid.

Dozens of other claimants have joined his lawsuit.

Its publisher, News Group Newspapers (NGN), has denied accusations of illegal activity and asked London’s High Court to postpone a potential trial tentatively scheduled to start in January.

It wants a narrower preliminary trial to decide whether the case was filed too late and outside statutory time limits.

But in Friday’s ruling, Judge Timothy Fancourt denied that request.

He said there were “obviously considerable risks” in preliminary trials that would “increase overall costs and delay” full trials by up to two years.

“This is unsatisfactory,” the judge added.

Two days ago, actor Hugh Grant settled claims that NGN illegally collected information, saying he wanted to avoid potential multi-million pound legal bills.

While no details of the settlement were disclosed, Grant said on social media that he had been offered a “significant amount of money” to keep him from having to go to court.

NGN said the claim had been settled “without an admission of liability” and that it was “in the financial interests of both parties not to proceed to a costly trial”.

Prince Harry, the youngest son of King Charles III, this year settled a long-running lawsuit against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) after it accused its journalists of engaging in deceptive and illegal tactics including phone hacking.

The prince has also launched legal action against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)