The start of Prince Harry’s court battle against Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group was delayed at London’s High Court on Tuesday amid chaos over last-minute settlement discussions between the two sides.
Harry and former senior lawmaker Tom Watson are suing News Group Newspapers over alleged unlawful activities carried out by journalists and private investigators working for its papers, the Sun and the defunct News of the World, from 1996 until 2011.
At what was supposed to be the start of an eight-week trial, Harry and Watson’s lawyer David Sherborne asked the judge, Timothy Fancourt, for more time.
“I’m sure your lordship can understand why that might be needed,” Sherborne said without elaborating.
After an hour-long delay, Sherborne asked for further time to continue discussions. Fancourt granted the request but said it must be the “last adjournment” and proceedings would get under way in the afternoon if no agreement were reached.
Sherborne subsequently asked for further time to negotiate, supported by NGN’s lawyer Anthony Hudson, who cited “time difference difficulties” in a possible reference to Harry, who lives in California.
Fancourt said he did not think the court filings contained anything that would have an impact on attempts to settle, to which Hudson said that “there are other matters which will occur when the trial starts which will have a very significant impact on the settlement dynamic.”
Fancourt declined to give the parties more time, and said that some of the two sides’ lawyers could continue to discuss a possible deal while the trial began.
Asked by Hudson to hold a short discussion in private, Fancourt replied: “I’m not going to start having secret hearings about what’s going on.”
The judge also refused permission to appeal, though the parties can appeal directly at the Court of Appeal.
The prince has said his mission is not money but to get to the truth, after other claimants settled cases to avoid the risk of a multi-million dollar legal bill that could be imposed even if they won in court but had rejected NGN’s offer.
“One of the main reasons for seeing this through is accountability, because I’m the last person that can actually achieve that,” Harry, who is set to appear as a witness himself in February, said last month.
NGN has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to victims of phone-hacking and other unlawful information gathering by the News of the World, and settled more than 1,300 lawsuits involving celebrities, politicians, well-known sports figures and ordinary people who were connected to them or major events.
Harry’s legal team has said in earlier court documents that his older brother Prince William, the heir to the throne, had settled his own case against NGN in 2020 for “a very large sum of money.”
While Murdoch closed the News of the World in 2011, the publisher has always rejected claims there was any unlawful activity at the Sun and says it will fully defend the claims.
The eight-week trial will at first consider “generic issues” such as the extent of any phone-hacking and unlawful information gathering at the papers.
Harry’s team will argue that senior executives and editors knew unlawful behavior was widespread, and allege that they misled police, provided false statements to a public inquiry into media ethics held from 2011-12 and instigated a massive cover-up with the deletion of millions of emails.
“This allegation is wrong, unsustainable, and is strongly denied,” a spokesperson for NGN said. “NGN will be calling a number of witnesses including technologists, lawyers and senior staff to defeat the claim.”
