By Michael Holden and Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) – Prince Harry’s legal battle against Rupert Murdoch’s British news group begins at London’s High Court on Tuesday, with the royal family seeking a ruling that senior figures knew about and covered up widespread wrongdoing.
Harry, along with former senior MP Tom Watson, is suing News Group Newspapers over alleged wrongdoing by journalists and private investigators working for their newspapers, the Sun and the defunct News of the World, from 1996 to 2011.
Prince says his mission is not money, but to get to the truth, after other plaintiffs settled their cases to avoid the risk of multimillion-dollar legal bills that could be imposed even if they won in court, but rejected NGN’s offer.
“One of the main reasons to end this is accountability, because I’m the last person who can actually achieve this,” Harry, who is due to appear as a witness himself in February, said last month.
NGN has paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to victims of phone hacking and other illegal information gathering by the News of the World, and has settled more than 1,300 lawsuits involving celebrities, politicians, famous sports figures and ordinary people who were associated with them or big events.
Harry’s legal team said in earlier court documents that his older brother Prince William, the heir to the throne, settled his case against NGN in 2020 for “a very large sum of money”.
Although Murdoch closed the News of the World in 2011, the publisher has always rejected claims that there was any illegal activity at the Sun and says it will fully defend the claims.
The eight-week trial will first consider “generic issues” such as the extent of any phone hacking and illegal gathering of newspaper information.
Harry’s team will argue that senior executives and editors knew the illegal behavior was widespread and misled police, made false statements to a public inquiry into media ethics that ran from 2011 to 2012 and instigated a massive cover-up that deleted millions of emails post.
“This allegation is false, unsustainable and is emphatically denied,” said an NGN spokesperson. “NGN will call a number of witnesses, including technologists, lawyers and senior staff to refute the claim.”
Apart from Harry, witnesses expected to be called or who have given evidence for prosecutors include former prime minister Gordon Brown, actors Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller, singer Lily Allen and Heather Mills, ex-wife of Paul McCartney.
