Prince Harry has left everyone in surprise as he finally settled a legal case against a UK publisher over claims of unlawful intrusion into his life.
The Duke of Sussex previously denied to make settlement and said “one of the main reasons for seeing this through is accountability, because I’m the last person that can actually achieve that.”
The Duke of Sussex alleged journalists and private investigators working for News Group Newspapers (NGN) used unlawful techniques to pry into his private life – and executives then allegedly covered it up.
The settlement was announced after barrister David Sherborne, representing the Duke, asked the judge on Tuesday to delay the start of the High Court trial.
There were speculations that the two sides were involved in potential settlement talks to end the case before it went to trial.
Prince Harry’s lawyers, in earlier court documents, claimed that the Duke’s older brother Prince William had also settled his own case against the group in 2020 for “a very large sum of money”.
NGN has reportedly apologised for unlawful practices at the now-defunct News of the World, but denied similar claims against The Sun – and Prince Harry’s wider allegation of a corporate-wide cover-up.
According to reports, NGN has paid out hundreds of millions of pounds 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.
When he launched his claim, Meghan Markle’s husband alleged that more than 200 articles published by NGN between 1996 and 2011 contained information gathered by illegal means.
He repeatedly said he wanted the case to go to trial so that he could get “accountability” for other alleged victims of unlawful newsgathering of private information by NGN journalists.
King Charles III’s eldest son Harry also settled a case last year against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) alleging the publishers had gathered information on him in unlawful ways from 1996 to 2010. MGN had to cover all of the duke’s legal costs, and more than £300,000 in damages.
