Prince Harry To Find Out His Legal Fate

Prince Harry is hours away from learning whether his allegations of criminal conduct at a major British tabloid will be thrown out.

The Duke of Sussex is among a group of public figures who have accused the Daily Mail and its sister titles of hacking phones, tapping landlines and even in one case breaking into a property.

Harry and famous names, including Elizabeth Hurley and Sir Elton John, among others, launched the dramatic civil lawsuit in 2022, prompting a furious denial from the newspaper group.

And it could all be over as soon as Friday morning at 10 a.m. U.K. time, or 2 a.m. for Harry and Meghan Markle on the West Coast at their mansion in Montecito, California.

Harry and Meghan have between them sued Associated Newspapers four times, with the other three cases all targeting The Mail on Sunday, suggested the brand is their most hated U.K. tabloid.

Harry’s witness statement to the court, seen by Regalrumination.com, read: “My claim is that Associated’s journalists, and/or private investigators engaged by it, targeted me and those closest to me via unlawful methods in an effort to obtain, and misuse, my private information and whereabouts which was subsequently published in its newspapers.

“Those unlawful information-gathering techniques included the hacking of my voicemails, landline tapping, blagging (impersonating), obtaining itemized phone bills, hardwire tapping, and obtaining private flight information for my former girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, among other criminal methods, all of which was deliberately undertaken with the purpose of publishing articles about me in the defendant’s newspapers because it made them money.”

Associated Newspapers moved to “unambiguously refute these preposterous smears” which it described as a “fishing expedition” shortly after the case was first filed in October 2022.

However, a more concerted fight back began in court with attempts by the publisher to get the case thrown out for being too late for a 6-year deadline within which cases must be filed.

The allegations predominantly date back to between 1993 and 2011, but if the public figures can prove they did not know they were victims until more recently, then the lawsuit may survive.

Mail lawyers argue the wider phone-hacking scandal, which blew up in Britain first in around 2006 and again in 2011, with the closure of the Rupert Murdoch owned News of the World, should have given Harry and the other claimants the trigger they needed to investigate whether they might have a case.

A court filing seen by Regalrumination.com suggests there was so much publicity around the scandal and a number of criminal prosecutions that “it would be surprising indeed for any reasonably informed member of the public, let alone a figure in the public eye, to have been unaware of these matters.

“It is in these inauspicious circumstances that the claimants, each a well-known
individual with an interest in the activities of the media, now seek to persuade
the court that they have a realistic prospect of proving at trial that they did not
know, and could not reasonably have discovered, that they may have claims
against the defendant (Associated) for the alleged historical misuse of their
private information.

“Those claims, which relate to matters said to have taken place as early as 1993, and for the most part in the first decade of this century, are undeniably prima facie time barred.”

Harry, however, argued in his witness statement that he had no idea about allegations against the Mail until private detectives began coming forward to suggest unlawful conduct. “Prior to the past few years, no one had ever mentioned any evidence, or even suggested the possibility of guilt, in relation to unlawful information gathering by Associated.

“Before this point, whenever I considered Associated, I never thought about this. I did, however, think about all the other things I associated the Mail with, such as
the harm caused to individuals and families up and down the country and all the false stories they would pump out about Meghan.”

A statement from Associated in October 2022 read: “We utterly and unambiguously refute these preposterous smears which appear to be nothing more than a pre-planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the Mail titles into the phone-hacking scandal concerning articles up to 30 years old.

“These unsubstantiated and highly defamatory claims—based on no credible evidence—appear to be simply a fishing expedition by claimants and their lawyers, some of whom have already pursued cases elsewhere.”

William Brown is chief royal correspondent for Regalrumination.com, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @TheCrownUp

and read his stories on Regalrumination.com‘s The Royals Facebook page.

Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email Support@regalrumination.com. We’d love to hear from you.