Prince Harry (center) and David Sherborne, Prince Harry's lead lawyer (right) leave the High Court after giving evidence in London, June 7, 2023. (PHOTO / AP)
LONDON – Prince Harry can take some of his lawsuit against media magnate Rupert Murdoch's tabloids to trial, London's High Court ruled on Thursday, but claims of decades-old phone hacking were thrown out for being filed too late.
The court also rejected one of Harry's central arguments, that there had been a "secret deal" struck between Buckingham Palace and Murdoch's newspaper group to keep quiet the illegal hacking into voicemails of royals' mobile phones.
Harry, the younger son of King Charles and the late Princess Diana, is suing News Group Newspapers (NGN) over alleged invasions of privacy by its tabloids, the Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, from the mid-1990s until 2016.
It is one of four cases that the 38-year-old prince, who now lives in California with his wife Meghan and their two children, is pursuing at the High Court against British publishers. He casts the legal actions as a mission to hold tabloid executives to account for lying and covering up widescale wrongdoing.
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In Thursday's ruling, Judge Timothy Fancourt said he could not conclude there was a "sufficiently plausible evidential basis" for Harry to allege a secret deal.
But he said the rest of Harry's claims of "blagging" – or obtaining by deception – confidential details about him and using other unlawful invasions of privacy could proceed to a trial due to begin in January next year.
"The remaining claims must be tried," Fancourt said.
"I do not find this is a case where it's possible to say one party is clearly the successful party."
However, NGN hailed the ruling as a "significant victory", and said it drew a line under hacking accusations dogging the publisher since 2005.
The Palace has declined to comment.
Harry's legal team will have to submit new details of claims against NGN, exclude phone hacking, ahead of next year's trial.
A general view of Buckingham Palace in London, Britain, Jan 11, 2020. (PHOTO / REUTERS)
Court documents submitted by Harry's legal team for the April hearings also said his elder brother Prince William, the heir to the throne
In earlier court documents, his lawyers suggested "blagging" took place as recently as when he began dating Meghan. They alleged the Sun instructed a private investigator to obtain information including her social security number.
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Since stepping down from royal duties in 2020, Harry has turned his focus onto battling the British press which he says has intruded into his private life since he was a child, spreading lies about him and those close to him.
He has also lashed out at his own family, including the king and his second wife Camilla who he says conspired through royal aides into planting stories about him in papers to enhance their reputations or distract from wrongdoing they might have committed.
In June, he became the first senior British royal for more than 130 years to give evidence in court when he appeared as part of another lawsuit against Mirror Group Newspapers.
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Harry has divided British opinion: some disapprove of his distancing from the royal family and view him as attention-seeking, while others applaud him as a progressive tackling an immoral media and old-fashioned establishment attitudes.
