Prince Harry’s long-running feud with British tabloids will come to a head this week. He is set to testify in a London court on Tuesday in a lawsuit against The Mirror newspaper alleging that the newspaper group hacked his mobile phone more than a decade ago.
Charles III’s second son to take the stand is a milestone for the Windsor family – he is the first senior royal to be cross-examined in a lawsuit since the 19th century – and it’s not his family You are likely to like it.
Prince Harry, also known as the Duke of Sussex, could face embarrassing questions about his personal life and relationships with other members of the royal family before he met wife Meghan Markle. Since stepping back from royal duties with Meghan in 2020 and leaving the UK for Southern California, Prince Harry has been estranged from his father, Prince Charles, and his brother, Prince William.
Members of the royal family have preferred to settle legal claims rather than face court scrutiny. Prince William settled a phone-hacking lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch-led British newspaper group The Newsgroup for “massive sums of money” in 2020, claiming Prince Harry filed a legal petition earlier this year in a separate case. bottom.
So far, Prince Harry has ignored all chances of reconciliation, turning his campaign against the tabloids into one of the most effervescent causes of his life. He claims the tabloids are responsible for the 1997 death of her mother, Princess Diana, in a car accident chased by photographers.
In addition to the Mirror Group, Prince Harry has also filed lawsuits against the newsgroups that publish The Sun and The Times, as well as the publishers of the Daily Mail. He is also suing the Home Office for being released from police custody after he and Meghan left their duties.
In April 2020, in a letter to the editors of four London tabloids, Prince Harry and Meghan said they were “for no good reason other than the fact that vulgar gossip increases advertising revenue”. accusing them of being irresponsible and unaccountable.
The Miller Group trial focuses on allegations that the newspaper hacked Harry’s cell phone, as well as those of his brother, a close associate and an ex-girlfriend throughout the early 2000s. Harry is one of four plaintiffs, including two actors who starred in the popular British television series “Coronation Street.”
Lawyers for the Miller Group argue that Harry and three other plaintiffs waited too long to file suit for conduct that occurred between 1991 and 2011. The Mirror admitted to being involved in a phone hack in 2014 and ran a front-page story the following February. I apologize to the victims of this practice.
The trial is expected to draw media attention and put the spotlight on Prince Harry’s single life before becoming a husband and father. Among the returning bold names is former girlfriend Chelsea Davy.
Prince Harry’s attorney, David Sherborne, said in court documents that details obtained from intercepting voicemail messages from Ms. .
In one case, in September 2009, Davey received a series of suspicious calls on her mobile phone. Within days two Miller Group papers ran headlines: ‘Enough is enough for Chelsea’ and ‘Chelsea breakup was ‘on paper”. Both articles discussed in detail the couple’s impending breakup.
Despite going to great lengths to keep details of their lives private, including having Ms. Davy travel under a false name, Prince Harry’s attorney said reporters were not seen where they agreed to meet. Said it happens often.
“This caused the couple to lose the trust of many of their friends and put undue pressure on their relationship,” Sherborne wrote. The surveillance “caused Prince Harry a great deal of distress and embarrassment, especially because of the safety concerns he and his protective staff had,” he said.
In addition to alleging that it took too long for Prince Harry to file a lawsuit, the Mirror Group also cast doubt on Prince Harry’s claims that he hacked Davey’s phone. Lawyers said the call appears to have been made to seek comment following reports that the couple had separated from Prince Harry.
By 2009, an employee of another tabloid, Mr Murdoch’s World News, had been sentenced to prison for phone hacking. So it’s unlikely the Mirror reporters risked intercepting voicemail messages from Prince Harry or Mrs. Davey, lawyers said.
Prince Harry’s testimony could also put a spotlight on prominent British TV broadcaster Piers Morgan, who was the editor of the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004, accused of phone hacking. Morgan has long denied any involvement in the hacking or commissioning of articles based on it, but Harry’s lawyers said it was hard to imagine Harry not knowing about it.
Since then, Morgan has become a scathing critic of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. When asked about the trial by an ITV reporter recently, he said: “I’m not going to take a lecture on invasion of privacy from Prince Harry, who has been relentlessly and cynically invading the royal family’s privacy for the past three years for enormous commercial gain,” and lied a lot about them. “
