A British newspaper publisher has agreed to pay Prince Harry a “substantial” amount in costs and damages for invading his privacy with phone hacking and other illegal snooping, Harry’s lawyer said on Friday.
Lawyer David Sherborne said the Mirror Group Newspapers had agreed to pay all of Harry’s legal costs, including damages, and would make an interim payment of 400,000 pounds ($505,000) within 14 days. The final tab will be evaluated later.
Harry was awarded 140,000 pounds ($177,000) in damages in December, after a judge found that phone hacking was “rampant and routine” at the Mirror Group Newspapers in the late 1990s, lasting more than a decade and executives at the newspaper reported it up. Judge Timothy Fancourt found that Harry’s phone had been hacked “modestly.”
Mirror Group said in a statement that it was “delighted to have reached this agreement, which gives our business further clarity to move forward from events that took place many years ago and for which we have apologized.”
Harry’s case against the publisher of the Daily Mirror and two other tabloids is one of several he has launched in a campaign against the British media, which he blames for ruining his life and defaming both his late mother Princess Diana and his wife Meghan.
“Our mission continues,” Harry said in a statement read outside court by his lawyer.
In December, the High Court ruled that Harry had been the victim of illegal information gathering including phone hacking by journalists linked to various tabloids. Reuters
In June, she became the first senior member of the royal family to testify in court in more than a century during her trial against the Mirror.
Harry, also known as the Duke of Sussex, was not in court for Friday’s verdict. He traveled to London from his home in California earlier this week to visit his father King Charles III, who has been diagnosed with cancer. Harry flew back to the United States about 24 hours later.
Harry still has ongoing cases against the publishers of The Sun and the Daily Mail over allegations of illegal spying. He recently dropped a libel case against the publisher of the Mail after an unfavorable pre-trial ruling.
Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, waves as he leaves the Rolls Building of the High Court in London, Britain June 7, 2023. REUTERS
At a High Court hearing on Friday, a judge ordered Mirror Group to pay part of the legal costs for three other claimants whose cases were heard alongside Harry.
Fancourt said that “all claimants have been vindicated” by the court’s findings of the Mirror Group’s wrongdoing, and that legal costs have been increased by the publisher’s “attempt to hide the truth”.
Harry is one of around 100 claimants – including actors, sports stars, celebrities and high-profile people who have sued MGN in the past. Reuters
He ordered publishers to pay the “ordinary costs” of public cases seeking to show wrongdoing by companies. That is separate from the legal costs of preparing and presenting individual specific claims.
The judge said that three other claimants must pay part of the Mirror Group’s costs in their individual cases, because they made excessive claims or failed to accept reasonable offers to settle.
The judge found in December that the privacy of all four claimants had been breached, but dismissed the cases brought by actress Nikki Sanderson and Fiona Wightman, ex-wife of comedian Paul Whitehouse, because they were filed too late. The lawsuit by actor Michael Turner was partially successful.
Phone hacking by British newspapers dates back more than two decades to when information-hungry reporters regularly dialed the numbers of royals, celebrities, politicians and sports stars and, when prompted to leave messages, dialed default passcodes to eavesdrop on mail. voice.
The practice erupted into full-blown scandal in 2011 when Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World was revealed to have intercepted the messages of a murdered girl, relatives of dead British soldiers and bombing victims. Murdoch shut down the paper, and a former editor of the News of the World was jailed.
The press was later found to have used other intrusive means such as tapping phones, wiretapping homes and “blagging” details of medical records, which means obtaining information fraudulently.
The Mirror Group newspaper said it had paid out more than 100 million pounds ($128 million) in other phone hacking lawsuits over the years, but denied wrongdoing in Harry’s case. It said it used legitimate reporting methods to obtain information about the prince.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
