By BRIAN MELLEY
LONDON (AP) — The third and final round in Prince Harry ‘s battle with the British tabloids began Monday with his lawyer alleging that the Daily Mail and its sister Sunday newspaper engaged in a “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering” for two decades.
Attorney David Sherborne said a longstanding culture of hiring private investigators who practiced “dark arts” to spy on celebrities for scoops had left Harry distressed and isolated.
It was “disturbing to feel that my every move, thought or feeling was being tracked and monitored just for the Mail to make money out of it,” Harry said, according to his lawyer’s written opening statement.
The intrusions were “terrifying” for his loved ones, created a “massive strain” on his personal relationships, and the distrust and suspicion they caused left Harry “paranoid beyond belief,” Sherborne said.
Tens of millions of dollars are on the line in the privacy invasion case in which the Duke of Sussex is joined by Elton John, actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, and others who claim the publisher of the Mail hired private investigators to bug their cars, obtain their personal records and eavesdrop on phone calls.
Associated Newspapers Ltd. has denied the allegations, called them preposterous and said the articles in question were reported with legitimate sources that included “leaky” associates willing to dish dirt on their famous friends.
The prince vs. the publishers
The trial in London’s High Court is expected to last nine weeks and will see the return of Harry to the witness box Thursday 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, cheerfully waved at reporters 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 as John watched the proceedings online.
The case in the High Court follows two cases Harry brought against the other major tabloids that grew out of the widespread phone hacking scandal in which some journalists intercepted voicemail messages around the turn of this century.
Harry won a court judgment in 2023 that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for “widespread and habitual” interception of phone messages. 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.
The litigation is part of Harry’s self-proclaimed mission to reform the media that he blames 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 said persistent press attacks on his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, led them to leave royal life and move to the United States in 2020.
Defense says ‘leaky’ friends among sources of articles
Defense lawyer Antony White said the lawsuits were based on weak inferences by trying to connect articles to payments made to investigators.
But he said witnesses, from editors to reporters who have worked for the newspapers for decades, were “lining up” to dispute the allegations and explain their sources, which he said were often very close the subjects of the articles.
“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.”
In addition to Harry’s social circle, royal press officers, publicists and freelance journalists and photographers were also good sources, White said.
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.
Skeletons in the closet
Sherborne 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.
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“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.”
Sherborne said his clients had not been aware they were phone hacking victims until private eye Gavin Burrows came forward in 2021 to help those he targeted.
Burrows said he “must have done hundreds of jobs” for the Mail between 2000 and 2005, Sherborne said in a previous hearing. Harry, Hurley, Frost, and John and his husband, David Furnish, were “just a small handful of my targets,” Burrows said in a statement read in court.
But Burrows has since disavowed that sworn statement and said he never worked for the Mail.
White said a substantial part of the case collapses without Burrows on the side of the claimants.
“Indeed, in the case of several of the claimants, their explanations of their ‘personal watershed moments’ show that without Mr. Burrows they would never have brought their claims,” he said.
But Sherborne, who said other witnesses have said Burrows did work for the newspapers, downplayed the investigator’s significance to his case.
“Mr Burrows is just one of a large number of private investigators Associated used and, we say, engaged in unlawful activities,” Sherborne said. “He was just the original whistleblower.”
The other claimants are anti-racism activist Doreen Lawrence and former politician Simon Hughes.
