Lawyers for Prince Harry and six other personalities are claiming “substantial” damages for privacy violation from the publisher of the “Daily Mail,” whose trial in the High Court of London ended on Tuesday.
These plaintiffs, including Elton John and actress Elizabeth Hurley, accuse Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), owner of the “Daily Mail” and “Mail on Sunday,” of obtaining information about them illegally. The defense, on the other hand, speaks of “speculation.”
During this trial, which lasted over two months, these personalities gave emotional testimonies. They accuse tabloids of intercepting voicemails, eavesdropping on phone conversations, or lying to obtain medical information for over fifty articles published between 1993 and 2018.
Damages “substantial”
“The Court is asked to grant substantial damages to each of the plaintiffs for the abusive use of private information about them,” their lawyers stated in their final written submissions. At the end of the final hearing on Tuesday, Judge Matthew Nicklin stated that the verdict, to be delivered in writing, would take “some time.” This is the latest legal action taken against tabloids by Harry, son of King Charles III, who has been waging a legal battle against the powerful British tabloid press for several years.
Harry, who lives in California with his wife Meghan and their two children, blames the paparazzi for the death of his mother Diana in 1997 in Paris. He has also accused the press of harassing Meghan. In court in January, on the brink of tears, he accused tabloids of making his wife’s life “absolutely infernal.” He also described how the intrusion of newspapers into his private life made him “paranoid to the extreme.” Harry, 41, stepped back from the royal family in 2020 and moved to the United States.
“Ordinary and legitimate journalism, based on previous reporting or confidential sources, is more likely than phone hacking, wiretapping, or other forms of illegal information gathering,” he argued in court. Antony White, however, acknowledged the use of private investigators in some cases to obtain phone numbers and addresses.
“Absolute nonsense”
The chief reporter of the “Daily Mail,” Sam Greenhill, dismissed the accusations of wiretapping as “absolute nonsense” in court. Another journalist, Barbara Jones, assured that she had found information about Harry’s former girlfriend “according to the rules.”
Prince Harry and the other plaintiffs claim that their relatives would never have disclosed the private information published in the articles in question. Testifying in January, British actress Liz Hurley burst into tears accusing tabloids of placing microphones on the windows of her house, describing their actions as “monstrous.”
Elton John also expressed his anger in a video statement in February, condemning the “odious” intrusions into his private life by the publications, accused of accessing medical data surrounding the birth of his son Zachary.
