Prince Harry has had a win. The fifth in the line of succession to the British throne won his phone hacking lawsuit Friday against the publisher of the Daily Mirror and was awarded over £140,000 pounds ($180,000) in the first of a string of cases against tabloid newspapers to go to trial.
AP reports Justice Timothy Fancourt in the High Court found phone hacking was “widespread and habitual” at Mirror Group Newspapers over many years and private investigators “were an integral part of the system” to gather information unlawfully.
He said executives at the papers were aware of the practice and covered it up.
The judge ruled in favour of the Duke of Sussex on almost half of the sample of 33 stories used in his claims of phone hacking and other methods.
“Today is a great day for truth, as well as accountability,” Harry said in a statement read by his lawyer outside court.
Fancourt awarded the duke damages for the distress he suffered and a further sum for aggravated damages to “reflect the particular hurt and sense of outrage” over the fact that two directors at Trinity Mirror knew about the activity and didn’t stop it, the AP report sets out.
“Instead of doing so, they turned a blind eye to what was going on and positively concealed it,” Fancourt said. “Had the illegal conduct been stopped, the misuse of the duke’s private information would have ended much sooner.”
A detail view of a printed copy of a written statement by Prince Harry which was distributed to the media following the ruling in his favour in a lawsuit against the Mirror Group on December 15, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Harry, the estranged younger son of King Charles III, had sought £440,000 ($560,000) as part of a crusade against the British media that bucked his family’s longstanding aversion to litigation and made him the first senior member of the royal family to testify in court in over a century.
Over two days as part of the seven-week trial, he was grilled about his allegations that the group’s newspapers – the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People – had published many stories about him, over several years, based on phone hacking and other unlawful ways of obtaining information, as Breitbart News reported.
Fancourt concluded Prince Harry, 38, had faced phone hacking – although to “a modest extent” – and other forms of dishonest gathering of information.
Prince Harry’s claim against Mirror Group is one of several legal battles he is fighting against newspaper groups, including Associated Newspapers and News Group Newspapers, the BBC reports.
The now Montecito, California, resident has had many procedural legal skirmishes and claims and counter-claims – but this was the most significant ruling so far, with a judge reaching a decision after a full trial.