Prince Harry is suing News Group Newspapers (NGN), Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper arm, for alleged unlawful acts committed on behalf of its tabloids, the Sun and the defunct News of the World, from the mid-1990s to 2016. In court documents, Harry's legal team revealed that his brother Prince William had settled a phone-hacking claim against NGN for a "very large sum" following a confidential agreement with Buckingham Palace.
This week, the High Court in London will hold preliminary hearings, during which NGN, which has paid millions of pounds to settle over a thousand phone-hacking cases, will attempt to strike out claims by Prince Harry and British actor Hugh Grant. NGN argues that they should have taken legal action earlier and denies any unlawful activity involving the Sun.
According to Harry's legal team, the reason he did not initiate legal action sooner was that an agreement had been reached between NGN and Buckingham Palace to postpone any claims until the resolution of other ongoing phone-hacking litigation. In their submission to the court, Harry's lawyers said that NGN settled with Prince William in 2020 for a substantial sum.
During a 2014 criminal trial against News of the World journalists, former royal editor Clive Goodman admitted to hacking the voicemails of Prince Harry, Prince William, and Kate Middleton, William's wife, in the mid-2000s.
In a witness statement quoted by his lawyers, Prince Harry said that the confidential agreement was made to avoid forcing a member of the royal family to testify about intercepted private and sensitive voicemails. Harry also mentioned that Buckingham Palace wanted to prevent any reputational damage stemming from the 1990s publication of an intimate phone conversation between Prince Charles and Camilla, now Queen Consort.
The court documents also reveal that the late Queen Elizabeth was involved in discussions and gave permission for Harry to pursue his case in 2017. NGN's lawyer, Anthony Hudson, denies any secret agreement between the publisher and the royal family and argues that even if such a deal existed, it does not affect their position that the lawsuit was filed too late.
Prince Harry, who now resides in California, is not attending the court proceedings but is watching via videolink, according to his lawyer David Sherborne.
In 2012, Murdoch's British newspaper group issued an unreserved apology for extensive phone-hacking by News of the World journalists. However, it has always denied any unlawful activity at the Sun. The ongoing case is one of four that Prince Harry is pursuing against British newspapers.