Prince Harry has been awarded 140,600 British pounds ($268,000) after London’s High Court ruled he fell victim to a British publishing group’s extensive phone-hacking.
Key points:
- Prince Harry has called on police to launch a criminal investigation
- The judge found 15 of 33 published articles were the product of phone-hacking
- MGN “apologised unreservedly” after the ruling
In a statement read by his lawyer outside court following the ruling, the British royal said he was happy to have won and called on the police to launch a criminal investigation against the newspaper group.
The prince – who became the first senior royal to appear as a witness in court for 130 years at the trial in June – had sued Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.
He said he was targeted by MGN for 15 years from 1996 and that more than 140 stories which appeared in its papers were the result of unlawful information gathering, though the trial only considered 33 of these.
Of those the judge found unlawful actions had contributed to 15 articles during a period when he concluded that there had been extensive phone-hacking and widespread unlawful actions at the newspapers.
“I found that 15 out of the 33 articles that were tried 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,” Judge Timothy Fancourt said.
The judge also concluded some senior executives and in-house lawyers were aware of the activities, although nearly all those on the board of the company had not been told.
“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,” he said.
MGN, owned by Reach, had argued the accusations were not supported by the evidence but “apologised unreservedly” after the ruling.
“We welcome today’s judgement that gives the business the necessary clarity to move forward from events that took place many years ago,” a spokesperson for MGN said.
“Where historical wrongdoing took place, we apologise unreservedly, have taken full responsibility and paid appropriate compensation.”
Harry and about 100 other claimants – including actors, sports stars, celebrities and people who simply had a connection to high-profile figures – have taken legal action over allegations of phone-hacking and unlawful information-gathering between 1991 and 2011.
Reuters