Prince Harry versus the press round two kicks off today at the High Court with just former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson by his side as a co-defendant against the publisher of The Sun.
The trial has already been described by judge Mr Justice Fancourt as a campaign between “two obdurate but well-resourced armies” in entrenched positions.
If it runs to the full seven weeks, one outcome is assured: huge legal costs for both sides.
The point of civil litigation is to reach a settlement for damage caused. The problem for The Sun and publisher News Group Newspapers, which also published the now-defunct News Of The World, is that Prince Harry is not motivated by money but rather revenge and a burning sense of injustice for past wrongs.
He wants to cause News UK as much trouble as possible and also potentially use the trial as a vehicle to find out if his dad, brother and late granny have been in cahoots with the news group. Harry has sought disclosure of emails sent between News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks and royal PR chiefs up to September 2019.
Harry previously had 41 co-defendants in his case but 39 claims have been settled by The Sun.
Those pre-trial settlements include actor Hugh Grant who said he was advised to accept what he described as “an enormous sum of money” in order to avoid being potentially liable for £10m in court costs. If he had refused to settle but was ultimately awarded less in damages than what he had been offered, he would have had to pay the difference.
Some 30 articles form the basis of Harry’s breach of privacy case dating back between 13 and 28 years.
It will be fascinating to find out the extent to which The Sun was involved in illegal newsgathering or whether, as was often the case in Harry’s earlier case against the Mirror, stories about his private life were often sourced through legitimate means.
In November I interviewed former Sun royal correspondent Duncan Larcombe who was royal editor of the title in the late 2000s – the peak of tabloid interest in Harry’s often outrageous antics.
Larcombe despises The Sun’s parent company for sharing confidential emails with police, leading to him spending more than 1,000 days on police bail before facing trial and eventually being acquitted as part of Operation Elveden.
He said: “When I was at The Sun we covered whatever Harry did because the readers loved him. We would often get a call from a Sun reader at Johannesburg Airport or wherever and say I’ve just seen Prince Harry. That is how we would get stories.”
Prince Harry versus the press round one concluded in December 2023 when Mr Justice Fancourt concluded that Harry’s phone was hacked “to a modest extent” by MGN, awarding him £140,600 in damages. Some of Harry’s co-defendants in that case faced hefty cost bills for taking the case to trial rather than accepting earlier offers to settle.
A third Prince Harry versus the press mega trial is yet to take place pitting the prince and a group of celebrity co-defendants against the publisher of the Daily Mail claiming widespread illegal newsgathering dating back up to 30 years.
The Mail publisher denies emphatically that it hired private investigators to secretly place listening devices in cars and homes. Claimants also allege that journalists eavesdropped on private phone calls and obtained bank and medical records by deception.
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