Prince Harry's battle against Murdoch UK tabloids goes to trial

He is due to give evidence at the trial, to back up claims against the two tabloids covering a 15-year period from 1996.

The prince, whose formal title is the Duke of Sussex, became the first senior British royal to give evidence in a witness box in 2023, when he testified against MGN.

Fancourt, who also presided over that case, eventually ruled in the prince’s favour, concluding phone hacking had been “widespread and habitual” at MGN titles in the late 1990s and the duke’s phone had been tapped to a “modest extent”.

Widespread phone hacking allegations against a number of British tabloids emerged in the late 2000s, prompting the launch of a public inquiry into UK press culture.

NGN apologised at the time for unlawful practices at the News of the World and closed it in 2011, while denying similar claims against The Sun and suggestions of a corporate cover-up.

It has since settled cases brought by some 1,300 claimants.

The publisher has paid out around £1 billion ($1.2 billion) including legal costs, according to British media, and never seen a case go to trial.

‘Accountability’

That has prompted criticism that England’s civil litigation system favours deep-pocketed defendants who leave claimants with little choice but to settle.

Various high-profile figures who made claims against NGN, including Harry’s brother and heir-to-the-throne Prince William and actor Hugh Grant, have settled in recent years.

Grant, a long-time critic of Britain’s tabloids, revealed last year he had opted against a trial because it could land him with costs approaching £10 million even if he won.

Under litigation rules, if a claimant refuses a settlement and a judge awards a lower sum after a trial, the claimant must pay both sides’ legal costs.

Harry has shown no sign of wanting to settle in a legal battle Fancourt said in an October ruling “at times resembles more an entrenched front in a campaign between two obdurate but well resourced armies”.

The British royal told a New York Times event last month that his goal is “accountability”.

His battle with an arm of Murdoch’s media empire appears highly personal, with Harry describing the 93-year-old mogul as “evil” in his 2023 memoir “Spare”.

“I couldn’t think of a single human being in the 300,000-year history of the species who’d done more damage to our collective sense of reality,” he wrote.