Prince Harry has reached a financial agreement to end proceedings against the publisher of the British tabloid Daily Mirror, whom he accuses of illicit collection of information, his lawyer David Sherborne announced on Friday February 9. The youngest son of King Charles III and Lady Di had already condemned the daily in December for hacking telephone messages.
On December 15, the High Court in London had already ruled in favor of Prince Harry and ordered MGN to pay him 140,600 pounds sterling (164,500 euros) in damages. The judge estimated that 15 of the 33 disputed articles retained in the proceedings – published between 1996 and 2009 – were the result of hacking into the voicemail boxes of the Duke of Sussex or his entourage as well as other illicit processes.
This agreement covers 115 other articles on which the courts had not yet ruled. According to the lawyer, publisher MGN agreed to pay a “substantial sum” to King Charles’s youngest son and to pay all legal costs. During a hearing at the High Court in London, without revealing the total amount of the agreement, David Sherborne mentioned an initial provision of 400,000 pounds sterling (468,000 euros).
“Our mission continues”
“After our victory in December, the Mirror group finally acceded to the rest of my demands, which would have required two more trials,” Prince Harry said through his lawyer. He once again attacked former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan, before saying: “Our mission continues; I believe in the positive change it will bring for all of us. » “This is why I started this and what I will continue to do until the end,” he said.
Prince Harry has initiated several legal proceedings targeting the methods of certain British media in covering his actions, particularly during his youth. Exiled in the United States and at odds with the rest of the British royal family, Harry, 39, feels a stubborn resentment towards the tabloid press, which he holds responsible for the death of his mother Lady Di, killed in a car accident in Paris.
In his judgment in mid-December, Judge Timothy Fancourt concluded that the group’s titles had massively hacked into the voicemails of celebrities between 2006 and 2011, including while a public inquiry into the behavior of the British press was taking place. He estimated that Prince Harry’s cell phone messaging had been hacked “to a modest extent.”
During the trial, Prince Harry testified for eight hours spread over two court days in June. It was the first appearance of a member of the royal family at the bar since that of the future Edward VII in 1891 for a libel trial.