Prince Harry, Elton John in UK court for hearing against Daily Mail publisher

London: Prince Harry and singer Elton John made surprise appearances at London’s High Court on Monday as they and five others began a lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail newspaper over years of alleged phone-tapping and privacy breaches.

Harry, the younger son of King Charles, has brought a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers alongside other famous figures, including singer Elton John, his husband and filmmaker David Furnish, and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost.

“They were the victim of numerous unlawful acts carried out by the defendant, or by those acting on the instructions of its newspapers,” lawyer David Sherborne said in a court document.

Sherborne who also represents Furnish, Hurley and Frost, said the intrusions were “habitual and widespread” and later “concealed or covered up”.

Articles were falsely attributed to “friends,” a family source, palace sources, royal insider, or similar phrases to throw subjects “off the scent” of the true origin, Sherborne said.

Among the allegations in court papers were that Associated Newspapers unlawfully obtained the birth certificate of John and Furnish’s child before they had seen the document and illegally gleaned information on Harry’s previous relationship with Chelsy Davy, a jewelry designer from Zimbabwe.

The publisher is also alleged to have hired a private investigator to hack Hurley’s phone, stuck a mini-microphone on a window outside her home and bugged ex-boyfriend Hugh Grant’s car to gather financial information, travel plans and medical information during her pregnancy.

John and Furnish arrived in court after a lunch break and sat in the gallery for part of the afternoon before bowing out. Harry sat near Frost towards the rear of the court during the whole session and occasionally took notes.

The case is a replay to some extent of the British phone hacking scandal that was front page news a decade ago and eventually brought down another tabloid and ended with the conviction of the former spokesperson for then-prime minister David Cameron.

Another claimant, Doreen Lawrence, the mother of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack in 1993, was also in court.

Harry hugged Lawrence at the end of the day’s hearing and chatted to her and Furnish, and gave a thumbs up to crowds outside as he left court.

Prince Harry arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice in London over a lawsuit against a media group.Credit: AP

The prince, who flew in from his Californian home, sat just feet away from a large group of reporters. None of the claimants are expected to speak during the four-day preliminary hearing.

They allege they were victims of “numerous unlawful acts” carried out by Associated Newspaper titles the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, their lawyers said in extracts of submissions made to the court.

The alleged activity ran from 1993 to 2011, “even continuing beyond until 2018″, the lawyers said.

The seven claimants launched the action last year, but legal restrictions requested by the newspaper group mean specific details of their allegations have not so far been made public.

Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online, has said it “utterly and unambiguously” denies the allegations. It is seeking, during four days of hearings this week at London’s High Court, to have the case thrown out.

The publisher asked a judge to impose reporting restrictions on some information included in the case, like the names of individual journalists involved, while it was decided whether it could proceed to a trial.

The newspaper’s lawyers argued that the case should be thrown out as some of the alleged instances are time-barred and certain information was improperly sourced from Lord Justice Leveson’s public inquiry into press ethics following the phone-hacking scandal, according to documents prepared for the hearing.

“We categorically deny the very serious claims made in this litigation and will vigorously defend them, if that proves necessary,” a spokesperson for Associated Newspapers said in a statement.

Harry is already suing The Mail on Sunday for libel over an article about his security arrangements, and last year won damages from the same paper after another defamation claim.

His wife Meghan also won a privacy case against the publisher in 2021 for printing a letter she had written to her estranged father. Meanwhile, Harry is expected to appear in court in May to give evidence in a libel trial against the Daily Mirror newspaper over accusations of phone-hacking.

Media intrusion was one of the reasons Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, cited for stepping back from royal duties and moving to California to forge new lives and careers. They fiercely attacked the press in their recent six-part Netflix documentary series and in Harry’s memoir Spare, while also accusing other royals of collaborating with newspapers over some false stories.

The fallout from those claims, about which Buckingham Palace has not commented, goes on. Harry is not expected to see his elder brother William while he is in London as the heir-to-the-throne is away for school holidays.

Reuters, AP

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