Prince Harry settles legal battle with Murdoch’s newspapers

Prince Harry and his legal team thrashed out a last-minute deal with Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper group on Wednesday to settle claims of widespread wrongdoing at the publisher.

The prince received a “full apology” but fell short of his mission to hold British tabloids accountable in open court, News.Az reports, citing NBC News.

The Duke of Sussex’s decision to settle his claims against News Group Newspapers (NGN) ends his efforts expose the misdeeds of the publisher of The Sun and long-shuttered News of the World in open trial.

With former lawmaker Tom Watson, Harry, 40, the younger son of King Charles III, had sued NGN over alleged unlawful activities carried out by journalists and private investigators working for the newspapers.

The group, which had long denied the allegations, offered what it called a “full and unequivocal apology” to the prince “for the serious intrusion by The Sun between 1996 and 2011 into his private life.”

In the British civil court system, a settlement often involves the accused covering the claimant's legal fees, as well as handing over an additional cash payment.

NGN said it was sorry for intruding into the private life of Harry's late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales and apologized to Harry “for the phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information by journalists and private investigators instructed by them at the News of the World.”

Outside the London court where the trial had been due to take place, David Sherborne — the lawyer representing the Duke of Sussex and Tom Watson — read out a statement on behalf of the pair.

“After endless resistance, denials and legal battles by News Group Newspapers, including spending more than a billion pounds in payouts and in legal costs (as well as paying-off those in the know) to prevent the full picture from coming out, News UK [NGN’s parent company] is finally held to account for its illegal actions and its blatant disregard for the law,” Sherborne said.

Sherborne’s statement added that “Prince Harry and his immediate family have also had to repeatedly withstand aggressive and vengeful coverage since starting his claim over five years ago,” which he said had left them concerned for their safety.

“Today the lies are laid bare. Today, the cover-ups are exposed. And today proves that no one stands above the law,” he said.

Harry first brought the lawsuit against NGN in 2019 and the eight-week trial was supposed to start on Tuesday. The prince had been expected to testify for several days next month

News.Az