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“The goal is accountability. It’s really that simple.”
By Georg Szalai
Global Business Editor
A legal battle brought by Prince Harry against the publisher of The Sun newspaper, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, kicked off at the High Court in London on Tuesday, without Prince Harry in attendance and with several delays.
The trial against News Group Newspapers (NGN, with former U.K. politician Tom Watson being the other remaining claimant alongside Prince Harry in the case, is expected to last around six to eight weeks.
The litigation is based on alleged activities, including alleged phone hacking and unlawful information gathering, carried out by journalists and private investigators working for The Sun and the defunct The News of the World between 1996 and 2011. Another topic for the court will be whether senior executives knew about these activities.
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“The goal is accountability. It’s really that simple,” Prince Harry told a press event in New York in December.
NGN has previously denied unlawful activity at The Sun and settled cases with dozens of other high-profile personalities, including the likes of Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller, with total payouts of more than $1.5 billion.
“This is a deeply personal battle for Prince Harry. It feels like a mission as much as a legal complaint,” explained BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan on Tuesday. “His campaign against what he sees as the intrusions and the abuses of the tabloid press is woven into his own personal story – with links to the loss of his mother Diana and to his decision to leave the U.K. While others have settled their claims against NGN, he has doggedly pursued this case, and now finally he’s ready to have his claims heard in court.”
Indeed, the trial is part of an ongoing showdown between Prince Harry and the British press. Parts of an article in The Mail on Sunday about Prince Harry‘s legal claim against the British government’s Home Office was defamatory, a High Court judge in London ruled in 2022.
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