Prince Harry has been awarded £140,000 in damages after a court ruled he was the victim of phone hacking by Mirror Group Newspapers. The High Court also ruled that Piers Morgan, who used to edit The Daily Mirror, knew about phone hacking, a claim Morgan has denied.
The Duke of Sussex alleged that he was the victim of more than 140 instances of illegal news gathering and the trial tested the evidence regarding 33 of those stories. In the past few minutes, a judge has said that 15 of these 33 sample articles were “the product of phone hacking … or the product of other unlawful information gathering.”
Harry has been awarded more than half of the £320,000 he was seeking, roughly equating to the number of articles that were found to be in breach. The Duke has been joined in his legal action by former Coronation Street actress Nikki Sanderson, comedian Paul Whitehouse’s ex-wife Fiona Wightman and actor Michael Turner, also known as Michael Le Vell.
While the sum is “modest,” the Judge said it reflects the hurt experienced by the Duke of Sussex because of MGN’s concealment of the wrongdoing, according to the BBC. He is reported to have said that “extensive” phone hacking took place at MGN between 2006 and 2011. The case has reopened old wounds in the British media industry following last decade’s Leveson Inquiry after hundreds accused tabloid newspapers of hacking their phones.
A spokesperson for MGN said: “We welcome today’s judgment that gives the business the necessary clarity to move forward from events that took place many years ago. Where historical wrongdoing took place, we apologise unreservedly, have taken full responsibility and paid appropriate compensation.”
The news comes just a few days after Harry was forced to pay £50,000 ($62,000) legal costs to The Mail on Sunday’s publisher after trying to have part of the UK tabloid paper’s libel defense thrown out.
Piers Morgan
The LA-based Prince is involved with several legal actions at present. In another against Associated Newspapers, the Prince and a group including Elton John are suing over allegations of unlawful information gathering, which a judge recently ruled can go to trial.
Morgan was editor of The Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004 and the High Court ruled today that he was aware of phone hacking.
In the past hour he has hit back, denying the claims and telling reports Harry wouldn’t know the truth if it “slapped him around his California tanned face.”
“Prince Harry’s outrage about the media intrusion into the private lives of the Royal Family is only matched by his own ruthless, greedy and hypocritical enthusiasm for doing it himself,” said Morgan.