Judge raises doubts over basis of Harry’s lawsuit
A private investigator has thrown a spanner into Prince Harry’s suit against the Daily Mail, denying that he’d ever confessed to bugging celebrities.
A judge told the Duke of Sussex yesterday he may have to “adjust his expectations” of the value of an alleged confession by a witness in his privacy claim.
Harry claims that Gavin Burrows, a private investigator, had admitted phone hacking and car bugging in his legal action against the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. Lurid admissions of Burrows’s activities are disclosed in a witness statement made public yesterday, in which he appeared to describe The Mail on Sunday as “one of my biggest and most regular clients”.
Burrows allegedly admitted targeting Harry, the actresses Sadie Frost and Elizabeth Hurley, and Sir Elton John. The statement says he charged pounds 2,000 to tap a telephone and pounds 3,000 to break into and bug a car.
He appeared to claim in the statement dated August 2021 that he did not target Harry directly but “put hardwire taps on and voicemail hacking of his friend Guy Pelly and doing loads on Chelsy Davy when he [Harry] was with her.” In a second statement, however, dated last month, Burrows appeared to claim that he had never worked for Associated Newspapers, publisher of the two newspapers.
He wrote: “I wish to make clear that I was never instructed or commissioned by anyone at The Mail on Sunday or the Daily Mail to conduct unlawful information gathering on their behalf.”
Burrows’s signatures on the statements are different. The older document appears to have a computer-generated signature, whereas the one last month appears to have been signed with a pen.
The duke, John and his husband David Furnish, Hurley, Frost and Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, the anti-racism campaigner, state that Burrows’s original alleged confession was a catalyst for their legal claims against the newspapers. Mr Justice Nicklin told the claimants at a preliminary hearing: “They may have to adjust their expectation of Mr Burrows in light of the [latest] statement he made.”
The judge asked if anyone had asked Burrows to explain the discrepancies. Adrian Beltrami KC, for Associated Newspapers, replied: “He says it’s not true.” Nicklin said: “Well there’s a trial point if I have ever seen one.”
He suggested the discrepancy would have to be examined at a full trial. Beltrami said: “Can one take Mr Burrows’s first statement to trial when it is completely contradicted by the second statement?”
He said three other private investigators alleged to have gathered information unlawfully for the publisher had not provided witness statements, while others had provided irrelevant information.
Harry did not appear at court for the third day of the hearing. He claims he was the victim of unlawful information gathering, including for an article about a girlfriend.
Beltrami said the claims were “too late”, with some allegations dating back 30 years. There is normally a six-year time limit on bringing claims, he added. “The claims are rejected by the defendant in their entirety.”
The judge questioned if the celebrities might have believed when the articles were published that they had been betrayed by a friend rather than that they had been the victim of unlawful information gathering. He asked if evidence by the newspapers’ staff to the Leveson inquiry into press standards that they did not gather information unlawfully would have assured them there was no wrongdoing.
Harry says he was unaware he was allegedly targeted by private investigators until his wife sued The Mail on Sunday in 2018. The hearing continues.
The Times