The third and final round in Prince Harry’s battle with the British tabloids has begun with his lawyer alleging that the Daily Mail and its sister Sunday newspaper engaged in a \u201cclear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering\u201d for two decades.<\/p>\n
Attorney David Sherborne said a longstanding culture of hiring private investigators who practiced \u201cdark arts\u201d to spy on celebrities for scoops had left Harry distressed and isolated.<\/p>\n
It was \u201cdisturbing to feel that my every move, thought or feeling was being tracked and monitored just for the Mail to make money out of it,\u201d Harry said, according to his lawyer\u2019s written opening statement.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including a spate of shark attacks, more bad weather to come, and Prince Harry\u2019s back at court. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
The intrusions were \u201cterrifying\u201d for his loved ones, created a \u201cmassive strain\u201d on his personal relationships, and the distrust and suspicion they caused left Harry \u201cparanoid beyond belief,\u201d Sherborne said.<\/p>\n
Tens of millions of dollars are on the line in the privacy invasion case in which the Duke of Sussex is joined by Elton John, actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, and others who claim the publisher of the Mail hired private investigators to bug their cars, obtain their personal records and eavesdrop on phone calls.<\/p>\n
Associated Newspapers Ltd has denied the allegations, called them preposterous and said the articles in question were reported with legitimate sources that included \u201cleaky\u201d associates willing to dish dirt on their famous friends.<\/p>\n
The prince vs the publishers<\/p>\n
The trial in London\u2019s High Court is expected to last nine weeks and will see the return of Harry to the witness box Thursday for the second time since he made history in 2023 by becoming the first senior member of the royal family to testify in more than a century.<\/p>\n
Harry, wearing a dark blue suit, cheerfully waved at reporters as he entered the court building via a side entrance. He took a seat in the back row of the courtroom near Hurley and Frost as John watched the proceedings online.<\/p>\n
The case in the High Court follows two cases Harry brought against the other major tabloids that grew out of the widespread phone hacking scandal in which some journalists intercepted voicemail messages around the turn of this century.<\/p>\n
As the royal’s rally around, there’s no word whether he’ll met with his estranged brother Prince William. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
Harry won a court judgment in 2023 that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for \u201cwidespread and habitual\u201d interception of phone messages. <\/p>\n
Last year, Rupert Murdoch\u2019s flagship UK tabloid made an unprecedented apology for intruding on Harry\u2019s life for years, and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The litigation is part of Harry’s self-proclaimed mission to reform the media that he blames for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi in Paris. He also said persistent press attacks on his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, led them to leave royal life and move to the United States in 2020.<\/p>\n
Defence says \u2018leaky\u2019 friends among sources of articles<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Antony White said the lawsuits were based on weak inferences by trying to connect articles to payments made to investigators.<\/p>\n
But he said witnesses, from editors to reporters who have worked for the newspapers for decades, were \u201clining up\u201d to dispute the allegations and explain their sources, which he said were often very close the subjects of the articles.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is in reality little more than guesswork \u2014 it involves jumping to conclusions based on insufficient evidence, or worse, artificially selecting and presenting evidence to fit the preconceived agenda,\u201d White wrote in his opening statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt also ignores the fact that references in articles to a \u2018friend\u2019, or similar, as a source can be accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to Harry’s social circle, royal press officers, publicists and freelance journalists and photographers were also good sources, White said.<\/p>\n
Associated Newspapers also argues that the claims, dating as far back as 1993, were brought too late when the suits were filed in 2022. <\/p>\n
Judge Matthew Nicklin refused to throw out the cases on those grounds but will reconsider that defence after hearing the evidence.<\/p>\n
Skeletons in the closet<\/p>\n
Sherborne said the company\u2019s vigorous denials, destruction of records and \u201cmasses upon masses of missing documents\u201d had prevented the claimants from learning what the newspapers had done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey swore that they were a clean ship,\u201d Sherborne said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAssociated knew that these emphatic denials were not true. \u2026 They knew they had skeletons in their closet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sherborne said his clients had not been aware they were phone hacking victims until private eye Gavin Burrows came forward in 2021 to help those he targeted.<\/p>\n
Burrows said he \u201cmust have done hundreds of jobs\u201d for the Mail between 2000 and 2005, Sherborne said in a previous hearing. Harry, Hurley, Frost, and John and his husband, David Furnish, were \u201cjust a small handful of my targets,\u201d Burrows said in a statement read in court.<\/p>\n
But Burrows has since disavowed that sworn statement and said he never worked for the Mail.<\/p>\n
White said a substantial part of the case collapses without Burrows on the side of the claimants.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed, in the case of several of the claimants, their explanations of their \u2018personal watershed moments\u2019 show that without Mr Burrows they would never have brought their claims,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Sherborne, who said other witnesses have said Burrows did work for the newspapers, downplayed the investigator’s significance to his case.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Burrows is just one of a large number of private investigators Associated used and, we say, engaged in unlawful activities,\u201d Sherborne said. \u201cHe was just the original whistleblower.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other claimants are anti-racism activist Doreen Lawrence and former politician Simon Hughes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The third and final round in Prince Harry’s battle with the British tabloids has begun with his lawyer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,1073,43,6747,40,38,41,39,1745],"class_list":{"0":"post-241455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-media","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-royalty","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories","16":"tag-uk-europe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}