On Day 2 of the pretrial hearing in Prince Harry’s case against the Sun and News Group Newspapers, additional information was introduced from Harry’s lawyer, David Sherbourne. According to the Guardian, Sherboune emphasized that Harry does not and did not “blame” Queen Elizabeth II for entering into a deal with the devil, Rupert Murdoch and his press outlets. QEII agreed to the deal in which no royal would sue NGN over all of the phone hacking, mostly because no one in the palace wanted to have a royal on the stand, giving evidence or testimony and be subject to cross-examination. Harry accepted the deal when he learned about it in 2012, but he still went to his grandmother in 2018 to push the issue and try to get NGN to back off of Meghan and/or give Harry an apology. This time frame is a big issue for the pretrial hearing, because NGN argues that Harry simply should have sued them back in 2012. This is Harry explaining why he didn’t or couldn’t.
Harry’s barrister, David Sherborne, told the court that the prince understood why the royal family had agreed to a deal: “If it needs to be said – and apparently it does – this is no criticism of the Queen or his family, and he accepted it, because he had to.”
Sherborne said that Harry had been “kept out of the loop” by the rest of the royal family on the existence of secret deal, only learning about in 2012. The lawyer told Mr Justice Fancourt that Harry had asked him “to express his frustration” at not being present at the high court but he had been unable to travel from his home in California. Sherborne, speaking on day two of the hearing, added that Harry was coming back for his father’s coronation and would be in London when his separate case against the publisher of the Mirror goes to trial next month.
“He is also following by video link despite the time challenges,” Sherborne told the court on day two of the hearing.
In a potential blow to Harry’s case, the judge overseeing the case said he was troubled by an “inconsistency” in his allegations. Harry claims he knew about the alleged secret deal that prevented him bringing a legal case against Murdoch’s company in 2012 – while also claiming he only fully appreciated the scale of phone hacking properly in 2019.
Murdoch’s company argues Harry waited too long to file his legal case as he should have realised he was a potential victim of phone hacking at the time.
By way of mitigation, Sherborne said Harry was serving in the army at the time of many of the key phone-hacking revelations and had limited access to publications that were reporting on voicemail interception at the News of the World and other outlets. The lawyer said: “He was on active service in Afghanistan and they didn’t have the Guardian.”
Just to get this straight – NGN (likely) had a deal with Buckingham Palace and Clarence House (then Prince Charles), a deal which was a result of the Leveson Inquiry and the Windsors finally understanding the extent to which their communications were being monitored for decades. The deal was “no Windsor can sue NGN, because NGN would drag them into court and ask them extremely embarrassing questions.” Harry was presented with the deal as fait accompli in 2012 and he understood why everything had been worked out that way. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t ready to deal with all of it. Then years passed and NGN and the entire British media apparatus began targeting Meghan Markle… and obviously, Harry felt differently about the “deal” by then. It seems like QEII felt differently as well, as she signed off on Harry’s pursuit of accountability. That was when Charles and the Windsors’ lawyers shut down Harry. It wasn’t until 2019 that Elton John convinced him to simply get his own lawyer, which Harry did and he promptly sued everybody. Meanwhile, NGN managed to secretly settle with Prince William in 2020 and there were no cries of “Willy shouldn’t have waited this long to pursue justice!”
Anyway, long story short, I don’t get why “you should have sued us back in 2012, when we were lying about everything and making backroom deals with your granny” is a legitimate legal argument.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
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- London, UNITED KINGDOM – Prince Harry pictured leaving the Royal Court of Justice in London. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 27 MARCH 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: Mario Pietrangeli / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- London, UNITED KINGDOM – Prince Harry pictured leaving the Royal Court of Justice in London. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 27 MARCH 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: Mario Pietrangeli / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- London, UNITED KINGDOM – Prince Harry pictured leaving the Royal Court of Justice in London. Pictured: Prince Harry BACKGRID USA 27 MARCH 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: Mario Pietrangeli / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- London, UNITED KINGDOM – Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex attends the Royal Courts of Justice as the lawsuit against Associated Newspapers enters its final day on March 30, 2023 in London, England. Prince Harry is one of several claimants in a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail. Pictured: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex BACKGRID USA 30 MARCH 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- London, UNITED KINGDOM – Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex attends the Royal Courts of Justice as the lawsuit against Associated Newspapers enters its final day on March 30, 2023 in London, England. Prince Harry is one of several claimants in a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail. Pictured: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex BACKGRID USA 30 MARCH 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
And this is why they blame and target Meghan—because their relentless attacks on her got Harry to sue them. And they’ll never forgive her for that.
I think they target Meghan because that was part of the package deal when William settled i.e. target Meghan and not him or Kate…. quid pro quo
But I still don’t understand why NGN paid William a settlement. For what exactly? What did they do to William? Did William complain about the Rose Hanbury story being published? How does that warrant a settlement? Please enlighten me!
So they did in fact hack William’s phones. A lot. Possibly even more than they hacked Harry. He had every right to take them to court. Which he did but then settled for money rather than going to trial, which is not unusual. Basically everyone does this bc it’s so costly to go to trial and the trial process will air out all your secrets to the public. The issue is that William did this all privately without the public knowing. Which is technically his right. However, the privacy was purposeful bc it kept NGN in a stronger position to fight other victims of phone hacking. They would be in a weaker position if the public knew they had settled money with William. It looks bad for the future head of state to be making secret settlements with powerful institutions like Murdoch and the media, especially when it hurts other citizens chances of winning their own hacking cases. Not a good look for a future king. Additionally, this case was settled past the statute of limitations. Harry is arguing that if William settled past the statute of limitations then why can’t he bring this case to trial despite time having passed. Finally, Harry was being slammed in the press for being overly-litigious with his court cases while William was seen as never complaining when, in reality, he had his own secret court case.
@Jais well said and I agree, especially with the point about this being secret (confidential settlements are nothing new, but this does not pass the smell test in my opinion, meaning it stinks, ha.) William knew a company was violating people’s privacy and he settled for himself but left the others out to dry. And your last point is really key here – Harry was being slammed for being overly litigious but William was also pushing back against the press.
They (RF and BM) also target Meghan because it hurts Harry. Harry stood up to all of them so they can’t actually hurt Harry on his own. But hurting Meghan hits Harry down in his soul.
William had every right to settle privately as has been stated, but the difference is he’s a public figure funded on taxpayer money, the future HOS, and this should have been transparent to the general public, and given so many others were victims of these illegalities. They would have been highly vested to see the outcome of his case in terms of what it would mean for them. The fact that his attitude was hooray for me, too bad for you is such harmful optics. And it just smells of a cover-up and dirty back-room deals.
I agree with that’s @ notokay. They didn’t have a problem reporting on Megan’s good deeds and nice clothes. It was when she wouldn’t ignore the favoritism and lies did they really try to get her killed.
And William had the means to turn the screws on them. So they cut him a deal. He isn’t like the rest of his family. He doesn’t care if he is liked. His court case would’ve been fireworks. He would’ve sacrificed everyone including Kate.
This whole family is corrupt – abolish the monarchy. I hope Harry gets his due.
Exactly. The Windsor Shit Show should be cancelled.
If they obtained the info they were going to ask about illegally by hacking someone’s phone is it allowed as a question? I know prosecutors in the US can’t bring up illegally-obtained info as evidence, but a civil case in the UK might be different. This sounds like giving in to extortion instead of a deal.
1. This is civil litigation, not criminal—it’s just about money, no one is in danger of going to prison, and
2. Lots of jurisdictions don’t throw out illegally obtained evidence; that wrongdoing may be punished separately, but the evidence itself is still admissible.
Still sounds like extortion. They can get sued if they print the info in the paper, but can instead print it after it comes out in court and not be sued for that? And to make a deal to not print if you dance to my tune? How is that legal? And why is no one in danger of prison for phone hacking in this case?
It’s extortion. Not sure how the law works but NGN’s lawyers have found a way to make it work in their favor. So yeah it’s extortion.
@equality the first reporter who was identified as hacking Williams voicemail did go to jail
@elx
Part of Harry’s stated objective in bringing the lawsuits is to see some of these criminals with press passes go to jail. So no……its not only a civil suit.
“The lawyer [Sherbourne] said: ‘H[arry] was on active service in Afghanistan and they didn’t have the Guardian.’”
I love this explanation of why Harry was kept out of the loop!
Something I found out as I was reading Spare (this is not in the book itself, I just found out abt it as I was looking up some stuff in the book), is that the Taliban, at the time of Harry’s deployment in Afghanistan, found out about his whereabouts/deployment bc they do in fact read the British tabloids.
I know the Taliban is hardly a funny organization, and they put not only Harry’s life, but also the life of everyone he was serving with on the base, at risk by finding this information out. But I can’t help but just cackle a little bit abt some Taliban desk jockey flipping through the Fail, and getting the latest deets on all the hot goss.
I was alive during this time. Geraldo riveria was working at fox News and drew a map of where the usa forces was and where they was going, live on air. This was the Iraq war 2003. Murdock people have always been a problem.
I had to examine my own biases a little bit on this one, you know? Like I hate to say it, and I do still think it’s hilarious that the Taliban had people reading British tabloids on the reg–the image in my mind is just funny. But at the same time…ofc they have people reading and keeping track of what’s published in foreign news outlets. Monitoring your enemy’s press is a good way to get an idea of what they’re trying to accomplish in the battlefield.
IIRC, this has been a problem since at least the US Civil War. General Sherman famously hated the press, bc they’d always report on where his troops were at, and publishing that info was just giving away their location to the Confederacy. I wanna say he banned journalists from any public event he was at, but I can’t really remember the details. Either way.
Then there’s the story about how there were a bunch of US soldiers on some US army base in Iraq or Saudi Arabia, who were using some app to track how much they were running on a given day. The bases don’t appear on maps used by lay people, but the app data was tracking their running route…which just so conveniently happened to be a good approximation of the perimeter of the bases these soldiers were at. The army had to get on top of that really fast and issue some new regulations stating that soldiers weren’t allowed to use those apps to track their running anymore. But it just goes to show, security leaks come from all over the place, and unscrupulous people, whether they be tabloids or the Taliban, will do all they can to exploit them for their benefit.
Thanks @A, that was interesting. I hadn’t known that about Sherman or the running apps at all.
Yeah, that was both scathing and brilliant. Scathingly brilliant, I guess!! 😂😂😂
Even if the court throws it out for statute of limitations running out, the damage is done. NGN is not denying the deal, and in the court of public opinion William is toast. Royalists are claiming he gave his settlement to charity, but the charity is not named. The alleged charity is not coming out to back Billy up.
Everything you’re saying is true @aquarius64, but man, I still want it go to trial. It all feels so grossly unfair. But yes it’s good to have all this info out there.
@JAIS, me too my friend, BUT if it doesn’t, my advice to Harry would be publish and be damned. Publish #,Spare. 2″and include copies of EVERYTHING all the receipts, all the emails and everything you held back from your original “, SPARE”. Harry is no longer Spare to anyone and owes the Borgias nothing. No more worrying about the harm it might do, because they didn’t worry about the harm they were doing to him, or Megan
Sound advice @Mary Pester. The info that we’re getting in this trial feels like companion chapters to spare!
Thank you, Elton, for convincing Harry (and Meghan) to hire their own truly exceptional lawyers to pursue their righteous claims against these rags. If they can spin Harry’s delays as beyond a statute of limitations, let’s talk about how Harbottle Harbottom (or whatever their name is) obstructed and delayed him for years.
If it were *just* Harry going after NGN in this matter, I might worry that his action may be dismissed based on this argument, but with so many others in this action with him, I have to believe the court will let it go forward. This is too important, and the claims present enough factual basis to justify it.
Factual inconsistencies in Prince Harry statements according to judge. What on earth is his lawyers doing.
I don’t think its an inconsistency at all and I don’t know why the judge worded it as such.
Two things can be true – Harry could have accepted the deal in 2012 not to sue while ALSO not realizing the extent of the phone hacking. Maybe if he had realized the extent, he would not have accepted the deal. So I don’t see it as an inconsistency at all. he did not have all the facts in front of him in 2012.
I agree with Becks about it not really being inconsistent and both things being able to be true. I’d also add that Harry’s family has lied to him and about him everyday of his life. So I’d also bet that he wasn’t told the extent of his personal phone-tapping by his family who were encouraging him to sign the deal. Perhaps Chuckles said Harry wasn’t phone-tapped or only tapped about some small thing. And if Harry was in an active war zone at the time, he’d be focused on other things.
Moreover @Becks1, if the judge wants to refer to that info as an inconsistency (i:e….H agreeing with his family’s deal with NGN not to sue in 2012 and then wanting to sue in 2019 AFTER receiving further and better particulars about the matter that was deliberately kept from him in 2012) then the judge must also be saying betty was inconsistent.
Because it was betty as head of state and monarch and head of the family who requested that all members of the family accept the deal in 2012 and then, based on emails H presented in the hearing yesterday, it was also betty who gave him the green light to pursue his current lawsuits.
But of course, the entire leadership apparatus of the UK State, is full of corrupt and proven cowards, all in hock to corrupt, criminal press barons:…….the govt, the security forces, the monarchy and, based on how the judge rules in this case with H v NGN, the judiciary.
We await the decision of this judge with bated breath to see the outcome of this legal action and, thereby, to see if Harry’s pledge to make it his life’s work to free britain from the clutches of criminal and/or cowardly, corrupt leaders and make way for a real 4th Estate to emerge, ends before it even begins.
I have a feeling Harry has tied their hands a bit, because the argument should be “due to a deal made in 2012 both the party being sued and the Royal Family conspired together to withhold the truth from Prince Harry” but Harry doesn’t want to say that about bjs grandmother.
I could imagine Harry was kept out of the loop about a lot of things. That’s how cults work.
That’s how cults work. See, this is what’s interesting. Absolutely, in my eyes, I can see Harry being kept out of the loop bc I see the RF as a cult. So his argument makes total sense. But I can see, even a laid-back monarchist, not seeing the RF as a cult and thus not seeing this as a strong argument. That said, considering how important hierarchy is to these people, the argument should still work just based on the very structure of hierarchy within the monarchy. It’s kind of a confusing circle argument I just made.
That and NGN stalled the communications of BP for two years, after the late Queen allowed Harry to pursue a public apology.
Not “No way, we wouldn’t stoop so low as to hack your phone” or “We would never have private investigators comb through your life illegally” but just “You should have known we were doing dirty deals with your family right and left and furthermore you should have figured it out earlier!”
This is another “she shouldn’t be wearing this short skirt”.
the “he should have sued in 2012” argument just falls so flat. He was told he could not sue by his father and grandmother – you know, the head of state? And he was told he would be given a public apology (which honestly might have been enough for him – a public apology and the behavior stopping, of course.) But instead they dragged their feet, refused the apology, which apparently ticked the queen off so much she considered her own legal action.
I wonder why William brought his claim in 2019. did he learn something new? Did he realize the extent of the phone hacking at that point? did he realize the phone hacking was still going on? What was the “favorable” deal worked out for William?
At least we know now why he suddenly started appearing at tabloid parties and the like. It was part of the deal.
ETA just coming back to say – this is such a bad precedent if the Sun wins on the SoL claim. they promised something in exchange for the victims not suing, and then once it was too late for them to sue they said “oh sorry, we were never serious about that promise anyway but HAHA, too late now, you can’t do anything about it.” Like…..that is just really really bad if that argument wins.
Most importantly, WILLIAM didn’t sue in 2012 either! But that certainly didn’t stop him from bringing the claim in 2019, AND getting a whole settlement for it! As Harry’s lawyer astutely points out, the SoL argument was not tried against William in 2019, so why is it being tried against Harry in 2023?
I don’t know if William found out anything new about the phone hacking to bring up a claim in 2019, BUT, wasn’t it that year that he was throwing the entire weight of his legal team up against any tabloid that dared breathe a word about any possible affair between him and Rose Hanbury? Then the next year after that, in 2020, he threatened to sue the Tatler for the Kate article and the threat itself succeeded in that the article is heavily redacted now. Then after that, he tried to bully the BBC abt the documentary.
I wondered at the time why William was going so all out in threatening the media like this, but now it makes a little bit of sense. He was doing it bc he was emboldened by the phone hacking settlement. That’s not to say that he shouldn’t have received a monetary settlement from them, but whatever the other terms of it were, or whatever the terms of the “deal” he struck with them were, it puffed him up enough to go around swinging his d-ck about anything and everything that he personally didn’t like. And the media couldn’t call him out on the future constitutional head of state using tax payer money to threaten and bully and silence a free press, bc they’d made a deal. Just f-cking shameful all around.
so I generally agree with you but also something I’m thinking about is – what if the rose story came from phone hacking? I know it was well known in aristo circles etc. But we have wondered how it got to the tabloid press. If it came from phone hacking, that would explain why william immediately started threatening lawsuits, why he brought a claim against NGN at that point( if they found out about it via hacking, intercepting a text message, etc), and why so many tabloids have capitulated to his threat about lawsuits when it comes to the Rose story – if the main source for that story is from hacking and not just aristo gossip.
To add to your point, @Becks1, remember the first story that came out about the whole ordeal wasn’t a story about an affair. It was a story about a falling out between Kate, and Rose, her “rural rival”. In the Sun article that came after the original Fail bit, it states that William was trying to play “peacemaker” between the two women, but Kate “didn’t want to see them anymore” and wanted to “phase them out”.
The “phase them out” phrasing is very specific, don’t you think? As is the fact that William is trying to be “peacemaker” between the two couples. The article actually has a lot that’s centered on William in the whole dispute, which would make complete sense if the story itself is from hacking and not just aristocratic gossip.
Also, and I JUST remembered this–remember the article that came a little while after the Sun article, where it talked about how both couples apparently were considering taking legal action against the Sun bc of the original article? I remember thinking at the time that it was such overkill, but now, in light of everything else, maybe he was discussing taking legal action for the phone hacking.
Then there’s the stuff about the alleged injunction from a judge, against printing anything about the Rose Hanbury affair, in England. Is it possible the injunction isn’t about printing anything regarding the affair, it’s just about printing anything regarding the affair that could have come from the phone hacking, and not elsewhere? But by not specifying that William was taking action for phone hacking, the other tabloids were successfully cowed into silence, bc they thought he was just being weird about his affair being made public?
I have to say, if any of my speculation is true, that puts all of William’s actions after 2019, wrt the press, into context. Granted, it doesn’t excuse him from behaving like an overhanded dictator (what he forced the Tatler to do was just pure censorship, there’s no two ways about that at all), BUT, it contextualizes the behaviour a bit, and I definitely think he came off of the phone hacking settlement feeling completely energized and ready to turn his legal guns on anyone and anything else that he didn’t like, whether any of it came from phone hacking or not.
@A just a correction – the Sun story came out first. Wootton had the story first, and then we had the article from Eden, and THEN we had that over the top article from Richard Kay about threatening lawsuits. So that fits with the idea that the Sun found out somehow through illegal means as they had it first.
BUT you raise a good point about how so much of the story focused very specifically on William and there was repeated use of the phrase “phase out” which is a very specific phrase in my opinion. and right, the emphasis on legal action also makes sense if it was about the phone hacking.
IDK, like I said below, there is so much we don’t know. but this part of it is starting to make sense in my mind.
Also, now I want to go back and reread the initial rose hanbury stories through this lens of phone hacking.
I could be wrong, I dunno, but I checked on the CB archives, and the way the post is laid out, it seems to state that the Richard Eden bit in the Fail came out first (which wasn’t even a full article), followed by the story in the Sun (which I’m not certain came from Wootton, but I might need to double check that). The way Kaiser explained it in the post abt the original Sun article, it sounds like the blurb from Eden had come out the previous week, and was “buried” bc it was just a blurb. It wasn’t until there was a full length article abt the “rural rival” story from the Sun, with all the curious verbiage, that it became bigger news, which was then followed closely by Richard Kay talking abt them talking abt lawsuits.
And yes, definitely go back and re-read the stories abt Rose Hanbury if you have the time! I could be wrong, and it could be that the phone hacking wasn’t about digging for info abt the affair, but even then, you can see how William’s response to the situation is just different. Do we know when in 2019 William pursued his action against the Sun, whatever it may be? The “rural rival” story came out in March 2019. I wonder if he went after the Sun before or after that.
@A oh no you are right! Eden had a little blurb that came out first, THEN the Sun, at least according to that CB story, bc both the original stories have been taken down. Hmmm. I was pretty convinced that Dan Wootton had it first and that’s what he had over William’s head; I wonder if there was another story before Eden’s article?
Anyway, maybe the DM was hacking phones along with the Sun, lol. But it seems William didn’t come out swinging until the Sun article, which was more specific and detailed. So Eden just heard gossip and the Sun had specifics? IDK.
If it weren’t for the timing of his claim against NGN and the settlement, I would just assume his response was because this story was true (there was an affair) and he was ticked bc it would be very damaging to him and his perfect family man image. but now hearing there was a claim and settlement….it just feels a little too coincidental, you know?
I plugged in the DM article URL into the Wayback Machine, and found an archived version of the blurb. The blurb itself didn’t have anything that I thought sounded like it came from hacking, so I think it was really just Eden just reporting on what was probably the hot gossip at the time.
My theory is that someone from the Sun read that blurb, found it intriguing, and decided to “””dig deeper””” via hacking into William’s devices or whatever. And what they found was maybe William texting Kate, asking her to please not “””phase out”””” the Rocksavages, and Kate being like, “Nope, I never want to see any of them ever again, tyvm.” Or at least, that’s what they reported on in the Sun article. What they found could have been a whole lot more than that.
Agree so much with your statement that if the Sun wins because of the Sol claim it will set a terrible precedent. Let’s say, we didn’t have William’s court case in 2020 and Harry is just arguing that his family prevented him from suing. Seems valid to me knowing all that we know. But will a judge who believes in the RF let that be a good enough reason?
I hope the judge gives great weight to the fact that the “family” who prevented him from suing = the actual Queen of England telling him no. This isn’t some random grandson now regretting that he followed his doddering nana’s legal advice.
One thing that popped into my mind is Was there a settlement offer before William’s case was filed? Meaning did they learn he had found out, so they went to him with an offer of, file a suit and we’ll settle for megabucks. Don’t worry, it can all be secret.
William seems to lazy to sue. He’d rather seethe. But he is greedy. Offering him a prearranged court case with secret settlement is just a clever way of tying his hands while making him think he came out ahead.
No proof at all, just having followed this lot for decades.
I guess I’m confused about this deal. Shouldn’t there have been safeguards in place to ensure that NGN kept up its part of the deal? If one side has an obligation and the other side has none, what kind of deal is that?
I trust Harry and his lawyers. I just have to say Johnny Depp lost to the Sun(I think) in the UK when he sued them. I’m sure he had great lawyers too.
What they wrote about him was factually correct, hence why he lost, this is a very different situation.
Johnny Depp is a claimant in this amalgamated lawsuit of NGN.
The crux of this case really is the fact that William received a settlement from NGN in 2020, for a lawsuit he brought in 2019, which was brought even after the statute of limitations had passed. Am I correct in assuming that that’s the problem here? I’m looking at one of the previous posts on the site, and it states in that that, William brought his claim in 2019, and NGN did not test the limitations argument against him the way they’re testing it against Harry now.
In light of that, I am not sure how fair it is for the judge to state that they’re “troubled by the inconsistencies” in Harry’s case, as to why he didn’t sue in 2012. I mean…neither did Baldy, from the looks of it, and the fact that he waited until 2019 didn’t seem to cause any issues with him getting a settlement and whatever the f-ck else he got out of NGN and the ghouls that work there.
There’s just…so much to the whole thing. So many moving parts. Harry didn’t sue in 2012 bc of the deal brokered by the Queen. When he wanted to sue in 2017-2018, he was stymied from doing so by his own father, who wanted to preserve good relations with the tabloids for favourable coverage of his reign and Camilla.
Then, in 2019, it turns out that William brought a claim for phone hacking against NGN, and no one discouraged him, or stopped him, in spite of the deal brokered in 2012, and in spite of Charles’ concerns abt tarring his future press coverage? A claim which he settled quietly for an undisclosed sum of money, that was previously not known to the public. All while Harry was discouraged from doing so at every turn, and only saw any forward momentum on the lawsuit when he hired his own lawyers, even though, all the while, it’s very freaking likely that the lawyers employed by the RF were doing all they could for William.
The whole thing is such a f-cking shenanigan. But most of all, it just desperately begs the question, WHY are the rules different for William, vs. Harry? The heir vs. the spare reasoning only extends so far. You can use that to justify the difference in income, support, resources from the RF, the protection afforded by the RF from the press, all of it. But this just seems unjustifiable to me, on some level, when both of them were victims of the same crime, but only one of them got restitution. That is just extremely low behaviour.
Also, this might not be a popular opinion, but $10 says that it was William himself who told Harry about the court case and the settlement with NGN. I can absolutely see it as an instance of William just updating Harry on what he’s been doing lately, and Harry being all, “Wait, they let YOU sue them for phone hacking, but when I tried it, dad told me not to??? WHAT?” William is just self-absorbed enough to talk abt this and not realize for a moment that Harry was going to take the same steps. Just madness.
I think one of the reasons Harry is putting so much out there right now is so even if he loses this case (which he might), the public knows the extent of the backroom deals and the shadiness involved.
We don’t know if NGN made a settlement offer to Harry like they did with William. I also think the Sun had more on William than on Harry – so I don’t think the settlement was just about the money for William.
I also wonder when Harry found out about William’s settlement with NGN.
About the settlement offer–that would have to be a settlement for the case that Harry is fighting right now, yes? And yes, we don’t know if NGN made that offer to Harry like they did with William, but the larger issue isn’t the settlement itself, or the money. It’s the fact that William was able to avail himself of the legal resources from the RF, and achieve something by way of restitution, while Harry was discouraged from doing the exact same thing, even though he was also a victim of the exact same crime.
The fact that William ever agreed to even try and prevent Harry from suing. He basically said to him, justice isn’t equal for everyone in the land, it’s one thing for me, and another for thee, bc I’m the heir, and you’re not. And this is from the future constitutional head of state for the UK.
It could be that the Sun had more on William than Harry. But even then, the issue here isn’t how much they have, it’s the fact that they hacked that information at all. That’s a crime, even if they didn’t find any incriminating information on William. I think William accepted the settlement bc as far as he is concerned, making deals with the press for favourable coverage is just standard operating procedure. I wonder if the way he convinced the RF to go along with the suit is by assuring them that he wouldn’t take it all the way to a trail, and by explaining the terms of the deal he wanted to extract from them.
The whole thing is just mind-boggling. And to think, so much of this could be solved if the RF just didn’t act like total dinks at every turn, that they need to be so terrified of the press catching on to them doing anything untoward.
@A but that is something we don’t know at this point – if Harry would have been allowed to pursue a settlement the way William was. The filings say William had a “claim” and I’m not sure if that necessarily means he filed anything. He may have just had someone call The Sun’s lawyers and go from there. It seems by 2019 Harry was intent on actually suing. But we just don’t really know what happened with William at this point.
I said the bit about the Sun having more on William because that gave William the motivation to settle. Maybe he would have brought a lawsuit but the Sun said “haha, you really want to drag alllllll this out in public??” (remember Harry’s mention in his filings of tampongate? wonder if the Sun had something like that on William?) And I think part of the deal too based on the comment about a “favourable deal” or whatever was that the Sun would be more favorable to william as long as he played ball. I don’t see Harry ever agreeing to such a deal.
All that said, I completely agree with you that this whole thing is mind-boggling, there’s so much we don’t know. Like you said, it definitely seems like William was given the go-ahead to do one thing (pursue a claim against NGN) while Harry was told he could NOT do that thing. Justice for William but not for Harry. (or the other victims.)
@Becks1, you’re right about William’s settlement. I remember when the news first came out, and I was very confused about whether William had even filed anything or not, bc the way it was worded made it sound like NGN handed over a million bucks, and then promised to play ball with William if he’d do the same with them.
As for why William agreed to the settlement and the deal–he’s a company man, through and through. This is standard procedure for the RF, to broker friendly deals with the press to keep the heat off of them, and in exchange, members of the RF won’t sue them or take any action against them. I think William is largely content to just preserve the status quo and not challenge it, bc it works for him. It’s what the Queen did, it’s what his father did, so it’s what he’ll do. Which really puts to rest all of the endless propaganda we got at the start of his marriage to Kate about how they’re going to do things totally different to the Queen and Charles, you’ll see!!!
But at the end of the day, what happened to Harry in all of this was disgraceful. And it further emboldened NGN to merely continue their criminal activities, bc they’d been assured that they’d never be held to account for them by the victim. That’s just horrible. I have no other words for any of that. It’s just BAD.
I believe (?) the info about the secret deal between BRFCo and NGN showed up in a redacted document from another court case. Supposedly there was enough info, despite redactions, that crux of story could be gleaned. (Sry, can’t provide reference, forgot where I read that.)
And there we have it. The Royal scumbags weren’t worried about bullets that could kill their son/brother /grandson in Afghanistan. They were only worried about the press bullets that couldn’t kill THEM, but could kill their money grabbing, adulterous, disgusting bed hopping life styles. Christ it was bad enough that they were willing to use Harry as cannon fodder for the press. But they were willing to let him be can cannon fodder for the taliban to be sure he wouldn’t know about the cosy backroom deal that was being made. I think this is when the Queen’s eyes were opened to what her son and eldest grandson were capable of, and that’s why she backed Harry to sue. The Queen loved Harry and it showed in the video he made with her for the first invictus games, along with the Obama’s. Christ I bet the incandescent one was spitting feathers and jealously raging all over the Palace. He most probably played “it should have been me” on a 24 hour loop for days
If Harry waited too long, then why did NGN feel pressured to settle with William in 2020? They could have gone another route – they already have dirt on the RF, they could have simply said give us Harry and Meghan or we’ll start leaking on you. But they threw in a million bucks because… generosity? Please.
@IZZY, exactly, the sun set a precident by paying William in 2020, so if the judge throws this out because of dates, I will expect to see him in an exemplary seat at the clowning!!
This. I hope the judge looks at the arguments and makes the right choice. But whew this would be an explosive trial and I’m sure at this moment powerful people are figuring out how to make sure that doesn’t happen. And I hope they fail.
And since the illegal activities continued after 2012, Harry can sue for that.
Not sure what UK law is on this, but the idea of barring a litigant who wasn’t even an officially consenting party in writing to the original Queen’s Agreeement from suing in perpetuity against all future bad acts that weren’t even committed at the time of the first contract doesn’t seem like something that would stand up in U.S. court. Given the atmosphere of coercion/duress between the Murdoch press and the RF (“you play nicely or we’ll embarrass you publicly”), I’m skeptical the original Queen’s Agreement would be valid. The best they have is statute of limitations (should have sued sooner when you first found out), but, again the duress/initimidation aspect (along with the fact that another family member sued after 2012), should factor into the court’s evaluation. Not sure they can argue that by not suing Harry somehow acquiesced to the first agreement when, on its face, it’s the definition of unconscionable.
So at this point, it would seem the judge has to believe that this 2012 agreement is real. Of course, the sun will say it is not and likely Charles and William will say it is not. But what evidence through emails and other info can Harry provide to show it was a real thing .
Also, the best the SOL argument could do would be to bar a suit against some of the bad acts from the distant past (though the thuggish/threatening behavior of the press should be a strike against them availing an SOL’s defense), not the ongoing and more recent conduct.
I blame the queen for not dealing properly with this mess in 2012 or before. For God’s sake, even the Pope gets criticized, so the queen is not automatically exempt from criticism. It is not treason to say she did something wrong. She did do something wrong. No one can say that? Really?