Prince Harry’s privacy case against Associated Newspapers

Prince Harry made a surprise appearance at London’s High Court for the second day of his privacy case against the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

He is one of a group of high-profile celebrities who are suing Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over allegations of unlawful information gathering, including commissioning the “breaking and entry into private property”, phone-tapping and the unlawful obtaining of medical records.

What is he alleging?

It was announced in October 2022 that the Duke of Sussex would be taking joint legal action against ANL but “so far, legal restrictions requested by the newspaper group mean that specific details of their allegations have not been made public”, said Cosmopolitan.

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According to David Sherborne, barrister for the group of claimants, they all claim to be victims of “numerous unlawful acts” carried out by ANL or by those acting on the instructions of its newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. Dating back to 1993 and continuing until 2018, these included “illegally intercepting voicemail messages, listening into live landline calls, obtaining private information, such as itemised phone bills or medical records, by deception or ‘blagging’, using private investigators to commit these unlawful information gathering acts on their behalf and even commissioning the breaking and entering into private property”.

Sky News’s royal correspondent Laura Bundock said Prince Harry’s “unexpected arrival at London’s High Court guaranteed all lenses were on him.

“For once, he wants to be the centre of the media attention. By coming to court, Harry is positioning himself as the poster boy of privacy cases,” she said.

He is already involved in a separate libel case against the Mail on Sunday over an article published in February 2022 about his security arrangements in the UK. In 2021 Prince Harry accepted an apology and damages from the paper over its claims that he had “turned his back” on the Royal Marines, while his wife, Meghan Markle, won a privacy case against the publisher in the same year for printing a letter she had written to her estranged father, Thomas Markle.

What is Associated Newspapers’ defence?

ANL said it “vigorously denies” all the claims in the current case, said the i news site. The publisher is arguing that Prince Harry knew extensively about allegations surrounding unlawful information gathering “long before October 2016” and that any claim he has is outside the statute of limitations and should be dismissed.

According to court documents seen by Yahoo News, “ANL is using Harry’s recently released memoir, Spare, to try to prove that he was more fully aware of certain allegations made about him earlier than he says”.

The news site said: “ANL cites a section of Harry’s claim that he ‘was probably aware of only a small percentage of the articles Associated wrote about me at the time’”.

Who else in involved?

Prince Harry has joined half a dozen high-profile claimants who have brought the case against Associated Newspapers.

They include Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish, who allege the Daily Mail published the birth certificate of their first child before they had even seen it and claim their private conversations were “tapped, taped, packaged and consumed as a commercial product for journalists”, said the Independent.

The actress Liz Hurley claims her phone was hacked and a microphone installed outside her home, while her ex-partner Hugh Grant’s car was bugged. Fellow actress Sadie Frost claims ANL used covert methods to get hold of information about her relationship and divorce from actor Jude Law, as well as their children, said Sky News.

Former Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes claims ANL paid a private investigator to unlawfully track down and photograph a man it believed was his lover.

And Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, alleges ANL “unlawfully obtained” information about the investigation into her son’s killing at the same time as the Daily Mail ran a campaign calling for justice for his death.

What happens next?

The preliminary hearing is expected to last until Friday and “will allow each side to offer legal arguments over whether the case should continue, with ANL putting forward arguments to end the claims without trial” by arguing the claims are “stale” and have been brought too late, the i news site reported.

NPR said Associated Newspapers is “trying to strike down the case on two points: 1) that some of the events in question occurred before 2007, which makes it outside the statute of limitations and, 2) that the claimants themselves unlawfully obtained evidence against ANL, using material from a government report that was under a strict confidentiality ruling”.

According to a press release from Hamlins, one of the law firms representing the claimants, none of them is expected to speak during the four-day hearing.

“That made it a big surprise for local media to see the Duke seated next to his fellow claimant Frost in a back row of the courtroom, studiously taking notes in a black notebook,” reported NPR. They were also joined by Elton John, who made a brief appearance yesterday – ensuring the public gallery will be packed for the remainder of the hearing.