Prince Harry and the owner of the tabloid The Sun are “very close” to a financial agreement to end the legal proceedings brought by the youngest son of King Charles III, a lawyer from the News Group Newspapers (NGN) group said on Tuesday.
“The lawyers of both parties have been engaged in very intense negotiations over the last few days and the reality is that we are very close” to an agreement, declared Anthony Hudson, the lawyer for Rupert Murdoch’s NGN group, before the High Court. Court in London where a trial on this case was to begin Tuesday morning.
The opening of the debates continued to be postponed during the day at the request of lawyers from both camps, to the great exasperation of the judge, Timothy Fancourt. The parties are due back in court on Wednesday.
A financial settlement would allow Harry and the NGN group, which owns the Sun and the defunct News of the World, to avoid a trial. A few dozen other plaintiffs have already opted for out-of-court settlements in this case.
The publications are accused by Harry of having used, in particular through private detectives, illegal processes to collect information intended to feed articles concerning him more than a decade ago.
This is a new episode in the legal battle waged by Prince Harry, 40, against the powerful British tabloid press. The Duke of Sussex, now retired from the royal family, lives in California with his wife Meghan and their two children.
He always held the paparazzi responsible for the death of his mother Diana in 1997 in Paris.
In 2023, he won a major victory against the tabloid press by obtaining the conviction of the editor of the Daily Mirror for articles resulting from the hacking of telephone messages.
The proceedings brought by Harry before the High Court in London do not relate to the telephone tapping, Judge Timothy Fancourt having ruled that the deadline to act on this point had passed.
“Refute the complaint”
In addition to Harry, a former Labor Party leader, Tom Watson, now a member of the House of Lords, is also suing the NGN group.
The two plaintiffs also accuse the group’s managers of having stifled the illegal actions of their employees by deleting emails.
The group rejected the accusations as “false” and “unsubstantiated.”
-A spokesperson said Monday that NGN would call during the trial “a number of witnesses, including technology experts, lawyers and senior officials (of the company) to refute the complaint.”
In 2023, Harry testified against the publisher of the Daily Mirror (MGN), becoming the first member of the royal family to give evidence in court in over a hundred years.
The judge, who was also Timothy Fancourt, ruled in his favor. He estimated that hacking celebrity voicemail boxes was “a very widespread practice” among MGN group titles at the end of the 1990s. He also specified that Prince Harry’s cell phone messaging had been hacked “in a modest measure.
The British press was shaken at the end of the 2000s by the revelation of several illegal wiretapping scandals.
“Maleficent”
Rupert Murdoch’s group apologized for illegal practices at the News of the World, which was abruptly closed in 2011, but denied the existence of similar actions at the Sun and denied any attempt to cover up the scandal.
Since then, some 1,300 plaintiffs have concluded financial agreements with the media group in various cases. According to the British media, the latter paid around one billion pounds (1.18 billion euros), thus avoiding any trial until now.
Harry’s older brother and heir to the throne, Prince William, is among those who have opted for such deals in recent years, as is actor Hugh Grant. The latter explained that a trial would have cost him ten million pounds (11.8 million euros) in legal costs, even in the event of victory.
Harry’s legal proceedings against Rupert Murdoch’s group were compared in October by Judge Fancourt to a battle “between two stubborn but well-resourced armies”.
Harry indicated during an event organized by the New York Times in December that he intended to hold the tabloids “to account”. In his 2023 autobiography, “The Substitute,” he called Rupert Murdoch “evil.”
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