Murdoch group lawyers say close to deal in Prince Harry lawsuit

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Lawyers for a UK tabloid publisher said Tuesday they were "very close" to settling a hotly-disputed lawsuit brought by Britain's Prince Harry for alleged unlawful information gathering by two of its newspapers.

Last-minute negotiations between the parties bogged down the start of the trial which had been due to open Tuesday at London's High Court.

The case is the culmination of years of legal wrangling during which dozens of other claimants settled, and pits King Charles III's youngest son and a Labour lawmaker against Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers (NGN).

They claim private investigators working for two tabloids owned by NGN -- The Sun and now-shuttered News of the World -- repeatedly targeted them unlawfully more than a decade ago.

Their blockbuster trial -- due to last up to eight weeks -- was set to begin Tuesday morning, but lawyers repeatedly asked the judge to postpone its start amid "intense" talks over settling.

"The solicitors for both sides have been involved in very intense negotiations over the last few days and the reality is we are very close," NGN's lawyer Anthony Hudson told the High Court.

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He added starting the trial could impact the "settlement dynamic" while "a very substantial sum becomes payable" once the case formally opens, without specifying further details.

The exasperated judge, Timothy Fancourt, refused the joint request for a third delay on Tuesday, insisting they had had "ample time" to reach an out-of-court deal.

However, the trial did not get underway, after lawyers for both sides indicated they would take their request to a higher court.

Cover-up claims

The lawsuit is one of several that Harry, 40, has brought against UK newspaper publishers, with whom he has long had a fractious relationship.

He has blamed the paparazzi for the 1997 death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a car chase in Paris.

The California-based royal won a phone hacking case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) just over a year ago.

However, the claim against NGN does not encompass the prince's phone hacking allegations, after Fancourt previously ruled he had run out of legal time to pursue that claim.

The only other remaining claimant in the case is Tom Watson, a former deputy leader of the Labour party who now sits in the House of Lords.

Both he and Harry claim NGN's private investigators used unlawful newsgathering techniques to generate stories about them, and that company executives deliberately covered up their practices by deleting emails.

Watson also alleges his phone was hacked between 2009 and 2011, when he was investigating Murdoch's tabloids as an MP on a watchdog committee.

NGN denies the allegations, calling the cover-up claim "wrong" and "unsustainable".

Harry, who quit as a working royal in 2020 and settled in the United States with his wife Meghan, is due to give evidence to back up his claims against the tabloids covering a 15-year period from 1996. He was not present Tuesday.

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

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

Legal costs

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 around 1,300 claimants.

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

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 that 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 had shown no sign of wanting to settle before Tuesday. The British royal told a New York Times event last month that his goal was "accountability".

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Source: AFP