Prince Harry accused of ‘scattergun’ approach in phone hacking case
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Prince Harry has been accused of using a “scattergun approach” to his claims of wrongdoing by the publisher of The Sun after adding a “huge” number of fresh allegations to his case.
The Duke of Sussex’s legal team has asked a High Court judge to extend the parameters of his hacking claim against News Group Newspapers (NGN) by including allegations that date back to 1994.
By expanding the scope of his case to events that happened 30 years ago, the Duke wants the court to consider claims against additional journalists and additional articles not included in his current claim. He also wants the court to consider events dating from as recently as 2016, rather than the current 2011 end date of his claim.
During a preliminary hearing on Thursday, Mr Justice Fancourt was told that the proposed claims included new categories of alleged wrongdoing by NGN, including the interception of voicemail messages left on landline telephones as well as mobiles, and also listening in live to mobile phone calls.
The Duke of Sussex claimed NGN eavesdropped on his phone calls and accessed messages on the pager of his late mother Diana, Princess of Wales.
Prince Harry’s legal team say News Group Newspapers (NGN) had a safe containing a 21-page log of pager messages left for the Princess by the art dealer Oliver Hoare, with whom she had an affair in the 1990s.
They also claim private investigators working for the now defunct News of the World used scanning devices to listen in on his phone calls, planted bugs or trackers on cars and intercepted voicemail messages left on landline telephones.
In a document submitted to the court David Sherborne, representing Prince Harry, said: “The claimant also brings a claim and seeks relief in relation to the interception of landline calls, the interception of calls from cordless phones and analogue mobile calls, and the interception of landline voicemails, as distinct from phone hacking.”
It added that Princess Diana “was under close surveillance and her calls were being unlawfully intercepted by (NGN), which was known about by its editors and senior executives”.
The 21-page log of around 500 of Princess Diana’s pager messages included some that had been used to inform articles in the News of the World, it is alleged, including one dating from 1995 about Mr Hoare’s divorce from his wife Diane, it is alleged. It referred to one message in which he told the Princess: “Thinking of you every minute, Love you.”
Lawyers for NGN argued in documents submitted to the court that the Duke was making unspecified allegations dating back decades and they should be barred by the statute of limitations on such offences because he could not argue that he had only just found out about them.
The Duke, the actor Hugh Grant and more than 40 others are suing NGN and the now-defunct News Of The World, over alleged unlawful information gathering and invasion of privacy. A trial has been scheduled for January 2025.
In a written outline of NGN’s defence, barrister Anthony Hudson KC said there was no “cogent link” between the new allegations and those that the court was due to consider.
He said: “This scattergun approach does not meet the requirements of … tests in relation to the pleading of similar fact evidence. Nor does it conform to the requirement that a trial be restricted to the issues necessary for and proportionate to the fair determination of the dispute.”
He said it was “wholly inappropriate” for the Duke to impose new claims on the court “on the speculative basis that, among the myriad of non-specific allegations made against undefined journalists across two newspapers throughout the period of 1996 and 2011, some isolated examples might ultimately prove to be relevant to some unspecified unlawful information gathering allegations”.
David Sherborne, for the Duke, said his client wanted to extend the scope of the case to 1994, when: “The Duke of Sussex was 10, but there was information relating to his welfare, relationships and his mother, Princess Diana, and her state of mind … and right up to 2016. That’s the relevant period of dispute.”
He said that in 2016, “the defendant instructed one of its regular private investigators in the US, Danno Hanks”, adding: “What we say he did was obtain private information in the form of a report about the Duke of Sussex’s new girlfriend, Meghan Markle, in order to obtain further information about their relation for the purposes of an article in The Sun.”
Mr Hudson said the 2016 allegation could not be considered by the court because it involved a New York-based journalist allegedly hiring a California-based private detective to carry out work in the US, therefore the alleged wrongdoing occurred wholly in the US and cannot be examined by a British court.
Mr Hudson also argues that if the judge allowed events from 1994 to be included in the case: “NGN would have to divert huge resources to investigating these new allegations at a late stage … these investigations and further steps will be onerous, and particularly given that the extensive early allegations [from 1994-1995] concern a period before electronic documents were in routine use and will require NGN to seek to locate, and elicit information from, witnesses in relation to allegations which date back 30 years.”
Mr Hudson has previously suggested that the case is being used “as some kind of substitute for a public inquiry or similar”.
