Prince Harry lawsuit against Murdoch tabloids set for trial, but hacking claims too old, court says
- The younger son of King Charles and the late Princess Diana, is suing over alleged invasions of privacy by The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World
- The prince’s claims of a ‘secret deal’ between Buckingham Palace and the news group to keep quiet illegal hacking into royal’s mobiles was also rejected
Prince Harry can take some of his lawsuit against media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids to trial, London’s High Court ruled on Thursday, but claims of decades-old phone hacking were thrown out for being filed too late.
The court also rejected one of Harry’s central arguments, that there had been a “secret deal” struck between Buckingham Palace and Murdoch’s newspaper group to keep quiet the illegal hacking into voicemails of royals’ mobile phones.
Harry, the younger son of King Charles and the late Princess Diana, is suing News Group Newspapers (NGN) over alleged invasions of privacy by its tabloids, The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, from the mid-1990s until 2016.
It is one of four cases that the 38-year-old prince, who now lives in California with his wife Meghan and their two children, is pursuing at the High Court against British publishers. He casts the legal actions as a mission to hold tabloid executives to account for lying and covering up wide-scale wrongdoing.
Harry blames intrusive media for wrecking some of his personal relationships and causing the 1997 death of his mother Princess Diana. Her chauffeur-driven car crashed as it sped away from chasing photographers in Paris.
In 2012, NGN apologised for widespread hacking by journalists at the News of the World, which the Australian-born media magnate Murdoch had been forced to shut down amid a backlash. But the group has always rejected allegations of any wrongdoing by staff at the Sun.
