Prince Harry’s Dispute With British Press Heads For Courtroom Showdown

The publisher of the Daily Mirror is set to appear in a London courtroom this week in Prince Harry’s dispute with the British press.

The Duke of Sussex is going to appear in the High Court on Monday after his lawyer presents opening statements in the first of three cases alleging tabloids unlawfully caught spying on him in their cutthroat competition for royal family scoops.

Harry’s Battle With Press

Harry will be the first member of the British royal family to testify in court in more than a century, and he is expected to describe his anguish and anger at being pursued by the media throughout his life, as well as the impact it has had on those around him.

Harry, 38, has accused paparazzi of his mother, the late Princess Diana, dying in a car crash, and has claimed that intimidation and interruption by the UK press, including allegedly racist articles, led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the United States in 2020 and leave royal life behind.

He has cited articles dating back to his 12th birthday, when the Mirror reported he was feeling “badly” about his mother and father’s divorce, now King Charles III.

According to court documents, the reports made Harry wonder who he could trust because he suspected friends and associates were betraying him by leaking information to the press. His circle of friends shrank, and he experienced “huge bouts of depression and paranoia.” Relationships damaged as the women in his life, and even their family members, were “dragged into the chaos.”

He claims that he later discovered that the source was not disloyal friends, but aggressive journalists and the private investigators they hired to eavesdrop on voicemails and track him to Argentina and an island off the coast of Mozambique.

Press’ Justification 

Mirror Group Newspapers stated that it did not hack Harry’s phone and that its articles were based on genuine reporting methods. The publisher admitted and apologized for hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on one of Harry’s nights out at a pub, but the resulting 2004 article, headlined “Sex on the beach with Harry,” was not one of the 33 in question at trial.

Mirror Group stated that it has settled over 600 of the approximately 830 unlawful information-gathering claims and has paid out more than 100 million pounds ($125 million).

The opening statements on Monday kick off the second phase of the trial, in which Harry and three others accuse the Mirror of phone hacking and unlawful information gathering.

In the first part, attorney David Sherborne, who represents Harry and the others, including two actors from the “Coronation Street” soap opera, said the unlawful acts were “widespread and habitual” at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, and carried out on “an industrial scale.”

The publisher has presented former executives and lawyers who denied knowing about wrongdoing when it was happening or engaging in a cover-up. The first lawsuits against Mirror Group were filed in 2012 and the newspapers printed an apology in 2015 to hacking victims.

Two judges — including Justice Timothy Fancourt, who is overseeing the trial — are in the process of deciding whether Harry’s two other phone hacking cases will proceed to trial.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and Associated Newspapers Ltd., which owns the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, have argued the cases should be thrown out because Harry failed to file the lawsuits within a six-year deadline of discovering the alleged wrongdoing.

Harry’s lawyer has argued that he and other claimants should be granted an exception to the time limit, because the publishers lied and deceived to hide the illegal actions.

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