The beginning of the end of Prince Harry‘s six-year long legal battle with Rupert Murdoch‘s News Group Newspapers (NGN) has commenced.
The LA-based Prince is suing The Sun and now-defunct News of the World owner for alleged unlawful information gathering by journalists and their contractors, in a high-profile trial that has been brewing for years. NGN apologized for unlawful practices against others at the News of the World many years ago, but denies similar claims against The Sun and allegations of a wider cover-up.
Over the next eight to 10 weeks, the judge and jury at London’s High Court will hear about more than 200 articles published by NGN between 1996 and 2011, which the Duke of Sussex believes were put together illegally. The trial will look at a sample of around 30 stories in detail and decide whether this was the case. Harry and former Labour Party deputy leader Lord Watson are the only two claimants going forward with legal action against the publisher. The court was told back in November that 39 cases have been settled since a hearing last July.
The Prince is expected to fly over from the U.S. to give evidence next month. His barrister, David Sherborne, who represented Johnny Depp in his libel suit against The Sun, was pictured arriving at the Rolls Building in the past hour. Sherborne’s first move was to ask for the court to be adjourned for one hour, according to the BBC live blog covering the case.
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Harry wanted to go in harder. The High Court ruled almost a year ago that the lawsuit would not include media tycoon Murdoch or ex-News of the World editor Piers Morgan, who were dubbed “trophy targets” by the judge. Furthermore, Harry will not be able to bring claims that he was the victim of bugging and tracking devices.
The judge, Justice Fancourt, has previously described the lawsuit as resembling a campaign between “two obdurate but well-resourced armies” that is taking up “more than an appropriate” amount of court time.
It will conjure memories of the notorious phone hacking trial that led to the closure of the News of the World in 2011, which Watson played a major part in.
Harry, who lives in LA with wife Meghan Markle, is of course no stranger to the courtroom. He has also taken on Mirror Group Newspapers, of which Morgan is a former editor. Last year, he was awarded “substantial” further damages in the remaining part of this phone hacking claim, and he blasted Morgan at its conclusion, claiming: “Even his own employer realised it simply could not call him as a witness of truth at the trial.” A few weeks prior, he dropped a libel claim against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday relating to his and Markle’s security arrangements in the UK.
He does have one more high-profile privacy trial after this one to come, however. That trial against the Daily Mail‘s publisher has been instigated with the likes of Elton John and Liz Hurley and was given the go-ahead late last year. The Mail’s publisher has described the allegations as “preposterous smears.”
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