Prince Harry scored a significant win in a cell phone hacking suit against the Mirror Group Papers, and the court awarded him a cool $500,000. All parties finally settled the case out of court.
The High Court Determined that Piers Morgan Was Guilty of Condoning Phone Hacking
The battle between Harry and the newspaper has been ongoing for four years. The Duke of Sussex sued the British tabloid for invading his privacy and illegally obtaining information about him.
In June, Harry is the first member of the royal family in over 100 years to bear witness in court. Other celebrities also testified against Mirror Group Newspapers in the case.
Charlotte Church, Steve Coogan, Hugh Grant, and Sienna Miller were also involved. Mirror isn’t the only newspaper that Harry has sued recently.
The High Court determined that the newspaper gained 15 out of 33 examined stories as a result of “widespread and habitual phone hacking.”
The court also ordered The Mirror Group to pay Harry’s legal fees. A representative for Harry called out the former Daily Mirror editor and British broadcaster Piers Morgan, agreeing with Judge Timothy Fancourt that he knew perfectly well what he was doing.
Prince Harry’s rep, David Sherbourne, said,
“His contempt for the court’s ruling and his continued attacks ever since demonstrate why it was so important to obtain a clear and detailed judgment.”
Sherbourne continued to explain that Morgan was well aware that several staff members conducted hacking and privacy breaches.
Morgan had to be aware of hacking while working at the Mirror. He has a long-standing distaste for Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle. A lot of evidence suggested that he was guilty of this. It wouldn’t exactly be above Morgan to pull it off.
Judge Fancourt Ruled That Cell Phone Hacking Was Prevalent and Persistent
Morgan responded to these accusations when they were first presented,
“I’ve never hacked a phone or told anybody else to hack a phone, and nobody has produced any actual evidence to prove I did.”
Omid Scobie, who wrote the book, “Endgame” provided evidence that Morgan approved a 2002 article about vocalist Kylie Minogue and her boyfriend, where the information was gained through voicemail interception.
Fancourt described Scobie as a “straightforward, reliable witness.” Some other witnesses came forward and said that Morgan had bragged about his newspaper taking part in phone hacking.
In December 2023, the High Court dictated that phone hacking was “widespread and habitual” in the 1990s and early 2000s in papers run by the Mirror Group.
Prince Harry suggested that his falling out with the royal family was the source of tabloid fodder for years and that newspaper groups, like the Mirror, tried to cover up the illegal ways in which they gathered the information.
Between 2003-2009 Harry’s cell phone was tapped by the Mirror.
“We have uncovered and proved the shockingly dishonest way in which the Mirror acted for so many years,”
Harry said about the newspaper group.
Prince Harry said that he would make it his mission to expose the dirty deeds of the tabloids and their total disregard for the privacy of others.
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