Prince Harry’s lawyer wraps up argument in phone-hacking trial
LONDON — A lawyer for Prince Harry finished setting out the prince’s case against a newspaper publisher Thursday, quizzing a former tabloid reporter about information inserted into stories by then-editor Piers Morgan.
On the final day of evidence, Harry’s lead attorney, David Sherborne, grilled former Daily Mirror royal correspondent Jane Kerr, whose byline appears on several of the 33 articles cited by Harry as examples of unlawful intrusion by the publisher Mirror Group Newspapers.
The lawyer suggested to Kerr that some of the information in her stories came from hacking into cellphones and listening to voicemail messages.
“It absolutely didn’t,” Kerr said with a touch of anger.
“I’ve never intercepted a voicemail. I wouldn’t even know how,” Kerr added. She also denied knowing about law-breaking by any freelance journalists or private investigators employed by the newspaper.
Kerr acknowledged in her written witness statement that Morgan, who edited the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, “would occasionally direct or inject information into a story” without her knowing the source.
Prince Harry and Meghan say they were in a ‘near catastrophic car chase’ Tuesday while being followed by ‘highly aggressive paparazzi’ in New York.
Asked by Sherborne about quotes in one story, she said: “I can’t say for sure where I got them from, because I can’t remember. It’s possible Piers gave them to me.”
Morgan has denied knowing about phone hacking at the Mirror, and the company is contesting Harry’s claims. The Mirror Group has previously paid more than $125 million to settle hundreds of claims of unlawful information-gathering and printed an apology to phone-hacking victims in 2015.
Harry, who flew from his home in California to testify earlier in the week, was not at the High Court on Thursday. He spent a day and a half on the witness stand Tuesday and Wednesday answering questions about his claim that some of Britain’s tabloids had unlawfully snooped on his life throughout his childhood and young adulthood.
He alleges that the Mirror Group’s newspapers hacked phones, bugged vehicles and used other illicit methods to obtain personal information they then splashed onto their pages as royal scoops. He said the intrusion poisoned his relationships with friends, teachers and girlfriends — even causing friction between him and his brother, Prince William — and led to “bouts of depression and paranoia.”
In ‘Spare,’ the Duke of Sussex attacks just about everything but the real source of his woes: the British monarchy itself.
The Mirror Group has apologized for one instance in which it hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on Harry, which was not among the stories cited in the claims he has brought.
Harry, 38, is one of four claimants whose lawsuits against the Mirror Group are being heard together at the High Court in London. Hearings are due to last until the end of June, with the judge, Timothy Fancourt, likely to deliver his ruling several weeks later.
Harry left royal life in 2020, citing unbearable media intrusion and alleged racism toward his wife, Meghan, and is on a mission to reform the British media. He is also suing two other newspaper publishers over alleged hacking.
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