Prince Harry's court battle against British tabloids reaches final chapter

Harry, also known as the Duke of Sussex, is among a group of seven high-profile plaintiffs who accuse the publisher of the Daily Mail of invading their privacy by using unlawful information-gathering tactics to snoop on them for sensational headlines.

Harry, Elton John and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost and others allege that Associated Newspapers Ltd. hired private investigators to bug their cars, obtain their private records and eavesdrop on phone calls.

The publisher has denied the allegations and called them preposterous.

Attorney David Sherborne opened his case by saying there was a culture at Associated Newspapers that spanned decades to unlawfully dig up dirt “that wrecked the lives of so many.”

He said the company’s vigorous denials, destruction of records and “masses upon masses of missing documents” had prevented the claimants from learning what the newspapers had done.

“They swore that they were a clean ship,” Sherborne said. “Associated knew that these emphatic denials were not true. … They knew they had skeletons in their closet.”

The trial in London’s High Court is expected to last nine weeks and will see the return of Harry to the witness box for the second time since he made history in 2023 by becoming the first senior member of the royal family to testify in more than a century.

Harry, wearing a dark blue suit, waved cheerfully at reporters and said “good morning” as he entered the court building via a side entrance. He took a seat in the back row of the courtroom near Hurley and Frost.

The prince vs. the publishers

The case was one of many that had emerged from the widespread phone hacking scandal in which some journalists began intercepting voicemail messages around the turn of this century and continued for more than a decade.

Harry won a court judgment in 2023 that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for “widespread and habitual” phone hacking. Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship U.K. tabloid made an unprecedented apology for intruding on Harry's life for years, and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.

Harry's self-proclaimed mission to reform the media is more personal and goes far beyond headlines that attempted to document his party boy youth and romance ups and downs.

He holds the press responsible for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi in Paris. He also blames them for persistent attacks on his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, that led them to leave royal life and move to the United States in 2020.

Repairing rift in the royal family

The trial comes as Harry tries to repair a damaged relationship with his family since he moved to America and burned the bridge behind him by penning a scorching 2023 memoir, “Spare,” and airing other family grievances in a Netflix series.

Frosty relations with his father, King Charles III, appear to be thawing a bit after the two met for tea last fall when Harry was last in town.

But a reunion this time looks unlikely.

The start of the trial coincides with Charles' trip to Scotland and Harry's visit is expected to be limited to the opening of the trial and his early testimony.

Defense says ‘leaky’ friends among sources of articles

Defense lawyer Antony White said the lawsuits were based on inferences from trying to connect investigator payments to various articles. But he said “leaky” friends of the celebrities were a major source of the stories.

“This is in reality little more than guesswork — it involves jumping to conclusions based on insufficient evidence, or worse, artificially selecting and presenting evidence to fit the preconceived agenda," White wrote in his opening statement. “It also ignores the fact that references in articles to a ‘friend’, or similar, as a source can be accurate."

He said witnesses, from editors to reporters who have worked for the newspapers for decades, were “lining up” to dispute the allegations and explain the source of each article.

Associated Newspapers also argues that the claims, dating as far back as 1993, were brought too late when the suits were filed in 2022. Judge Matthew Nicklin refused to throw out the cases on those grounds but will reconsider that defense after hearing the evidence.

Private eye with conflicting claims

A private investigator whose name is on a sworn statement supporting the claims of Harry and the celebrities has filed another statement denying he ever snooped on them.

During an early hearing in the case, Sherborne said his clients were not aware they were phone hacking victims until Gavin Burrows and other investigators came forward in 2021 to “do the right thing” and help those he targeted.

Burrows said he “must have done hundreds of jobs” for the Mail between 2000 and 2005, and that Harry, John and his husband, David Furnish, and Hurley and Frost were “just a small handful of my targets.”

But he has since signed another statement saying he had not been hired by Associated Newspapers to do any unlawful work.

It's unclear what impact his conflicting statements will have on the case.

The other claimants are anti-racism activist Doreen Lawrence and former politician Simon Hughes.