Prince Harry’s bitter, long-standing feud with the British tabloid press will come to a head this week. He will appear in a London court on Tuesday for a lawsuit against the Mirror newspaper group on charges that it hacked into his mobile phone more than a decade ago.
King Charles III’s youngest son appearing on the witness stand is a milestone for the House of Windsor – he’s the first senior royal to be questioned in a court case since the 19th century – and it’s not one of his family likely to fall in line the taste.
Harry, who is also known as the Duke of Sussex, may face embarrassing questions about his personal life before meeting his wife Meghan, as well as his relationships with other members of the royal family. Since he and Meghan retired from royal duties in 2020 and left Britain for Southern California, Harry has become estranged from his father, Charles, and older brother, Prince William.
Members of the royal family have preferred to settle legal claims rather than undergo the scrutiny of a courtroom. William settled a phone hacking case against Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group, the News Group, in 2020 for a “massive sum of money,” Harry claimed in a legal filing in a separate case earlier this year.
Until now, Harry has brushed aside all chances of a settlement, making his campaign against the tabloid press one of the animating causes of his life. He has said he holds the tabloids responsible for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a 1997 car crash after she was chased by photographers.
In addition to the Mirror Group, Harry has filed lawsuits against the News Group, which publishes The Sun and The Times, and against the publisher of The Daily Mail. He is also suing the Home Office for withdrawing his police protection after he and Meghan backed down from their duties.
In a letter to the editors of four London gossip magazines in April 2020, Harry and Meghan denounced them as irresponsible and irresponsible, saying they were tearing people’s lives apart “for no good reason, other than the fact that salacious gossip increases advertising revenue.”
The Mirror Group lawsuit is centered on allegations that the newspapers hacked Harry’s mobile phone, as well as those of his brother, assistants and an ex-girlfriend, during the early 2000s. Harry is one of four accusers, including two actors who appeared in the popular British TV series ‘Coronation Street’.
Lawyers for the Mirror Group allege that Harry and the other three accusers waited too long to charge for acts that took place between 1991 and 2011. The Mirror admitted in 2014 that it engaged in phone hacking, and published the following February it a front-page apology to the victims of the practice.
The trial promises to be a media spectacle, highlighting Harry’s single life before he became husband and father. Among the bold names it will revive is Chelsy Davy, who he once dated.
In a legal filing, David Sherborne, a lawyer for Harry, said details obtained from Ms Davy’s intercepted voicemail messages resulted in intrusive articles, straining Harry and his relationship with her.
In one case, there was a series of suspicious calls to Ms Davy’s mobile phone in September 2009. Within days, two Mirror Group newspapers ran the headlines “Chelsy’s Harry’d Enough” and “Chelsy Breakup ‘Was on Cards’.” Both articles discussed the couple’s impending split in intimate detail.
Despite extreme efforts to keep details of their lives secret – including allowing Ms Davy to travel under a pseudonym – Harry’s lawyer said reporters often turned up at places where the pair had agreed to meet.
“This led to the couple losing trust in numerous friends and putting unnecessary strain on their relationship,” Mr Sherborne wrote. The investigation, he said, caused Harry “great fear and embarrassment, not least because of the security concerns he and his security staff had.”
In addition to arguing that Harry waited too long to charge, the Mirror Group has cast doubt on its claim that it hacked into Ms Davy’s phone. The lawyers said the calls were likely made to get comment following reports that she and Harry had split.
In addition, employees of another tabloid, Mr Murdoch’s News of the World, had been jailed for phone hacking in 2009. That made it unlikely, the lawyers said, that The Mirror journalists would have run the risk of intercepting voicemail messages from Harry or Ms Davy.
Harry’s testimony could also shine a spotlight on Piers Morgan, a prominent British television broadcaster who was editor of The Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, when the company was accused of phone hacking. Mr Morgan has long denied any involvement in hacking or commissioning articles based on it, although Harry’s lawyers said it was hard to imagine he knew nothing about it.
Mr. Morgan has since become a scathing critic of Harry and Meghan. When recently asked about the process by an ITV reporter, he said: “I’m not going to be following lectures about privacy invasion from Prince Harry, someone who has spent the last three years ruthlessly and cynically violating the royal family’s privacy for huge commercial gain. … and told a pack of lies about them.
