The Duke of Sussex’s lawyers were accused of “clutching at straws” in his privacy case before the judge asked Harry to give evidence a day earlier than had been expected.
Harry was at the High Court on Tuesday morning to hear claims that journalists obtained intimate details of his relationship with Chelsy Davy, then his girlfriend, including their “sleeping arrangements”.
Harry is one of seven people, including the musician Sir Elton John, the actress Elizabeth Hurley and the campaigner Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, who are suing Associated Newspapers Limited, claiming that it misused their private information. ANL has strongly denied wrongdoing and is defending the claims.
The celebrities’ lawyers have argued that ANL, publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, paid private investigators who intercepted voicemail messages, listened in to landline calls and obtained medical records by deception.
The 14 articles involved in Harry’s claim were written between 2001 and 2013.
The duke left court at lunchtime on Tuesday and was not present when the hearing ended 45 minutes into the afternoon session with the conclusion of ANL’s opening defence statement.
Harry had been due to spend Wednesday with his lawyers before giving evidence on Thursday. Mr Justice Nicklin, the trial judge, asked if Harry could give evidence on Wednesday morning instead.
David Sherborne, Harry’s barrister, said he would “endeavour to have the Duke of Sussex here at 2pm tomorrow”.
He said Harry would detail “distress” and “paranoia” he had suffered as a result of the alleged unlawful gathering of information about his private life and that the duke felt he had “endured a sustained campaign of attacks against him for having had the temerity to stand up to Associated in the way that he has so publicly done”.
• Prince Harry’s friends were ‘a good source of leaks’, court hears
Antony White KC, representing Associated, had taken only 75 minutes to complete his opening statement. A day and a half had been scheduled. He described the privacy claims brought by Harry and the other high-profile figures suing the publisher as “threadbare”.
Records of payments by the publisher to private investigators were “examples of clutching at straws in the wind and seeking to bind them together in a way that has no proper analytical foundation”, White said. The social circles of the celebrity claimants — excluding Lawrence and Sir Simon Hughes — were, he said, “leaky” and their “friends, and friends of friends, or associates, did regularly provide information to the press about [their private lives]”.
Hurley, Elton and Elton’s husband, David Furnish, relied “heavily” on allegations by one private investigator, Gavin Burrows, in a witness statement Burrows had since disavowed, the court was told.
Gavin Burrows
BBC/EXPRESS ONLINE
Hurley, 60, argues that the American billionaire Steve Bing was “using the press” during their dispute over the paternity of her son, her court was told. She sat next to her son, Damian, as the court was told that there had been extensive media coverage of her public announcement in 2001 that she was pregnant with Bing’s child, and his public statement casting doubt on his paternity.
The court was told there had been reports that Damian had been conceived at Elton’s home. A DNA test later confirmed that Bing, a businessman and film producer, was the father. Bing killed himself, aged 55, in 2020.
Elizabeth Hurley with Steve Bing in 2001
JIM RUYMEN/REUTERS
Hurley said in a witness statement that she believed Bing and his supporters had been “using the press … to manipulate the entire saga” and had “leaked or placed [stories] to make him appear to be an accountable and responsible father”, the court was told.
Furnish supported Hurley’s account in his own witness statement, saying: “We all believed it was Bing.”
Hurley added that leaks about her private life were “inevitable … and we always put them down to the leaky contractor or observer, someone who knew someone, nothing sinister or horrid but perhaps a mistaken indiscretion or gossip”.
Elton, 78, and Furnish, 63, are complaining about ten articles published between 2002 and 2015. They include articles about their relationship with Hurley as well as reports of “tensions in the royal household” over plans for a memorial concert for Princess Diana and Harry and William’s hopes that Elton would be a headline act.
Another article, headlined “Elton: I’m the daddy” and published in 2010, reported that after the birth of their son, through a surrogate, the singer was named as the father and Furnish as the “mother”. The complainants allege that the information was gained unlawfully.
White said the information about the birth certificate had been provided by the Los Angeles Local Registrar’s Office in response to a legitimate request by a journalist.
The court was told that a funder of Harry’s legal team had used the racist slur “no tickee, no monkey” in a message about allegedly paying a private investigator to persuade him to alter evidence and admit that he had worked on behalf of Associated.
Max Mosley, who inherited his fortune from his father Sir Oswald, the fascist leader, made the comment in an email relating to efforts to get evidence from Glenn Mulcaire, who was convicted for hacking voicemails on behalf of The News of the World, the court was told.
The trial continues.