Harry awarded €164,000 in phone hacking claim against Mirror Group

PA High Court Staff

Britain's Prince Harry has been awarded £140,600 (€163,734) after bringing a phone hacking claim against a tabloid newspaper publisher at the High Court in London.

Mr Justice Fancourt concluded there was “extensive” phone hacking generally by Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) from 2006 to 2011, “even to some extent” during the Leveson Inquiry into media standards.

The judge also ruled Harry’s phone was probably hacked “to a modest extent” by the publisher.

Harry (39) sued Mirror Group Newspapers for damages, claiming journalists at its titles – the Daily and Sunday Mirror and Sunday People – were linked to methods including phone hacking, so-called “blagging” or gaining information by deception, and use of private investigators for unlawful activities.

 

His case was heard alongside similar claims brought by actor Michael Turner, who is known professionally as Michael Le Vell and is most famous for playing Kevin Webster in Coronation Street, actress Nikki Sanderson and Fiona Wightman, the ex-wife of comedian Paul Whitehouse.

The allegations in their claims about unlawful activity at MGN’s titles covered a period from as early as 1991 until at least 2011, the court was previously told.

Mr Justice Fancourt, the judge who oversaw a trial of the claims earlier this year, delivered his ruling at a short hearing on Friday.

In a summary of his ruling, the judge said Harry’s case over voicemail interception and unlawful information gathering was “proved in part only”.

He said that 15 of the 33 articles about Harry examined at trial “were the product of phone hacking of his mobile phone or the mobile phones of his associates, or the product of other unlawful information-gathering”.

“I consider that his phone was only hacked to a modest extent, and that this was probably carefully controlled by certain people at each newspaper,” the judge added.

Mr Justice Fancourt said this happened “on occasions” from around the end of 2003 to April 2009.

He added: “There was a tendency for the duke in his evidence to assume that everything published was the product of voicemail interception because phone hacking was rife within Mirror Group at the time.

“But phone hacking was not the only journalistic tool at the time and his claims in relation to the other 18 articles did not stand up to careful analysis.”

The judge said he was awarding damages to Harry where unlawful information-gathering was proved, and also to compensate him “fully for the distress that he suffered as a result of the unlawful activity directed at him and those close to him”.

“I recognise that Mirror Group was not responsible for all the unlawful activity that was directed at the duke, and that a good deal of the oppressive behaviour of the Press towards the duke over the years was not unlawful at all,” the judge continued.

“Mirror Group therefore only played a small part in everything that the duke suffered and the award of damages on this ground is therefore modest.”

He said damages were also awarded to Harry “to reflect the particular hurt and sense of outrage that the duke feels because two directors of Trinity Mirror plc (as MGN’s parent company was formerly known), to whom the board had delegated day-to-day responsibility for such matters, knew about the illegal activity that was going at their newspapers and could and should have put a stop to it”.

“Instead of doing so, they turned a blind eye to what was going on, and positively concealed it. Had the illegal conduct been stopped, the misuse of the duke’s private information would have ended much sooner,” the judge said.

Claims brought by Ms Sanderson and Ms Wightman were dismissed by Mr Justice Fancourt because they were made too late.

Mr Turner was awarded a total of £31,650 in damages after the judge ruled his phone hacking and unlawful information-gathering case was “proved only to a limited extent”.

The high-profile trial ended in June after seven weeks of evidence from dozens of witnesses, including former journalists, editors, private investigators and MGN executives.

Many other witnesses also submitted written testimony to the trial, such as the friends, family and colleagues of those bringing cases against the publisher.

Harry faced eight hours of questioning over two days during a witness box appearance that drew the attention of the world’s media.

MGN largely contested the claims and denied that any newspaper articles complained of resulted from phone hacking, while contending that the vast majority did not arise from any other unlawful activity.

The publisher made a limited number of admissions of unlawful activity in relation to Harry, Ms Sanderson and Ms Wightman, for which the publisher apologised and accepted they will be entitled to some damages, but denied the majority of their claims and Mr Turner’s entire case.