- Prince Harry returns to UK court over phone hacking case
- UK tabloid company refutes Duke of Sussex's claims
- King Charles' youngest son accused the royal family of withholding phone hacking evidence
On Tuesday, Prince Harry returned to a London court as his attorney challenged claims that the phone hacking cases he, Elton John, and other celebrities have filed against the publisher of The Daily Mail are based on unlawful information.
Associated Newspapers Ltd. rejects the charges and wants a judge to dismiss the cases, which it claims improperly depend on confidential material the publisher provided in 2012 as part of an investigation into media law violations.
Prince Harry at High Court
Per ABC News, this lawsuit is one of several taken against the press by the Duke of Sussex. It is said that the company's publications, including The Mail on Sunday, commissioned the "breaking entering into private property" and paid private detectives to bug houses and automobiles and record phone calls unlawfully.
Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost have also filed claims in this lawsuit. John and his spouse, David Furnish, claim that the publisher illegally stole their son's birth certificate and snooped through the singer's medical information.
Associated Newspapers rejects the allegations and seeks to dismiss the case, alleging that the claims are too old and banned because they are based on confidential material it provided to a 2012 media law-breaking investigation.
Prince Harry claimed that the publication illegally hacked his voicemails, tapped his landlines, and obtained itemized phone bills and travel details of his then-girlfriend Chelsey Davy to attack him and his closest associates. One item from The Mail on Sunday described the prince's trip with Davy to a luxury polo camp in Argentina and the couple's weekend excursions to Cape Town.
This week's four-day hearing will focus on two legal issues: whether Prince Harry and others waited too long to file charges, including claims dating back to 1993, and if they rely on information that should have been kept secret. The High Court has heard that Prince Harry has accused the royal family of "undoubtedly" hiding information concerning phone hacking from him "for a long time" because they did not want to "open a bag of worms."
The publisher argued on the second day of a preliminary hearing at London's Royal Courts of Justice that a portion of the lawsuit should be dismissed because it depends on sensitive information provided to the Leveson Commission. On Monday, the court heard that Prince Harry had lost or "shut off" friends because "everyone became a 'suspect' because he was misled into believing that persons close to him were the source" of stories about him, The Independent reported.
High-Profile Battle Against UK Tabloid
Other claimants' witness testimonies, including those of Doreen Lawrence, Elton John, Liz Hurley, and Sadie Frost, detailed charges of illegality at Associated Newspapers and the harm they had allegedly caused. Associated has rejected all allegations as "ridiculous slander."
Elton John told the court that he thought the Mail was "inhumane" and that it had dredged up his medical data and his son Zachary's birth certificate, which he described as "abhorrent and beyond even the most fundamental rules of human decency."
Doreen Lawrence's attorney, Imran Khan KC, stated that his client felt betrayed by the Mail, which had previously advocated for her dead son Stephen. Doreen Lawrence found the Mail's hypocrisy "breathtaking and incomprehensible, especially after all the inhumanity we have encountered since the night Stephen was murdered," according to the source.
Sadie Frost stated that her ex-husband, Jude Law, felt that she was leaking details about their divorce to the press, although she now claims that this resulted from unlawful information interception. Liz Hurley stated that she objects to "Stasi-like" media monitoring.
On Tuesday, the court argued over whether Associated Newspapers' secret material submitted to the Leveson inquiry can now be utilized by the claimants in the lawsuit. The Mail, which is trying to throw out the charges, said that the evidence demonstrating payments to private investigators should not be allowed since the information was supplied to the public inquiry with a confidentiality guarantee.
Steve Whittamore, a former private investigator, said that he was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to give the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday with unlawfully obtained material, according to The Guardian.
He stated that some journalists who utilized his services and were aware that the material he gave for their stories was illegally obtained "still in key positions at Associated's publications."
Adrian Beltrami KC, defending Associated Newspapers, informed the court that an additional private detective relied on by the claimants has now produced a signed witness statement "denying that he was commissioned or authorized by Associated to carry out illicit activities."
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