Prince Harry settles UK hacking lawsuit vs tabloid
High court judge ruled in the duke’s favor in December.
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) Prince Harry on Friday settled a long-running legal claim against Mirror Group Newspapers, nearly two months after a UK judge ruled he had been a victim of phone hacking by its tabloid titles.
The Duke of Sussex sued MGN which publishes The Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People alleging its journalists were linked to deceptive and unlawful methods, including phone hacking.
The high court judge ruled in the dukes favor in December, after finding evidence of such practices relating to 15 of the 33 sample articles that Harry had submitted in the case.
Judge Timothy Fancourt said Harrys personal phone had been targeted between 2003 and 2009 and that the 15 articles were the product of phone hacking... or the product of other unlawful information gathering.
He concluded that phone hacking had been widespread and habitual at MGN titles in the late 1990s but that the dukes phone had only been tapped to a modest extent. The judge awarded him £140,600 ($177,300) in damages.
Harrys legal claim had included a further 115 articles, and they might have become the subject of a further trial.