Prince Harry Begins Legal Action Against Prominent Tabloids
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Wikimedia Commons.
Prince Harry has begun legal action against some of Britain’s major tabloids amid allegations of phone-hacking, filing court documents on September 27.
Prince Harry has opened up official proceedings at the High Court against the owners of the Sun, the Daily Mirror, and the defunct News of the World, claiming unlawful interception of voicemail messages. He is represented by the legal firm Clintons LLP, which has represented numerous clients in phone-hacking cases.
The prince’s announcement of legal action on October 4 came just days after his wife, Meghan Markle, began legal proceedings against the Daily Mail. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, filed a suit against the paper on September 29 for unpermitted publishing of correspondence between her and her father.
Though the timeline for the legal claim is still unclear, John Dymon, BBC's royal correspondent, says the presumption of the legal action goes back to the phone-hacking scandal of the early 2000s. The News International phone-hacking scandal saw members of the British royal family, celebrities, politicians, and relatives of deceased soldiers hacked by employees of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
On October 1, during the royal couple’s tour of southern Africa, Prince Harry issued a strongly worded attack on the British tabloid press over the treatment of his wife, calling them “relentless propaganda” and made an emotional reference to his mother, the deceased Diana, Princess of Wales, who infamously received much negative publicity during her marriage to Prince Charles, the heir. "My deepest fear is history repeating itself,” the prince said, going on to accuse the tabloid media of practicing “bullying” behavior that “destroys people and destroys lives” with "continual misrepresentations.”
Following the announcement, a spokesman for News Group Newspapers (NGN), the owner of the Sun and the News of the World, said, "We confirm that a claim has been issued by the Duke of Sussex. We have no further comment to make at the current time," while a spokesman for Reach PLC, the owner of the Daily Mirror newspaper, declined to comment on the situation.
Both NGN and Reach PLC have a history of controversy. Between them, the two media companies have paid out almost £500 million ($615 million) to victims of the phone-hacking scandal in legal costs, while the total bill could eventually amount to £1 billion ($1.23 billion), according to campaign group Hacked Off. Brian Cathcart, co-founder of the group, reacted to the prince’s move by calling it a "measure of how far the couple have been pushed.”
Celebrities such as Elton John, Hugh Grant, and Elizabeth Hurley have all settled claims against the two media companies in recent years.