A few weeks ago, Prince Harry’s barrister David Sherborne filed new paperwork in Harry’s lawsuit against the Mail (ANL). The new filing named several current and former Daily Mail editors, accusing them of illegal activities for years in their pursuit of stories about Harry and his family. While all of the people named worked for the Mail at some point, the list includes the current editors of the Sun, Times and Sunday Times, meaning those people left the Mail and went to work for Rupert Murdoch in some capacity. That story didn’t get much attention because Harry was getting so much attention for visiting London and not seeing his father, plus the successful Nigeria trip. Now something else has happened – Sherbourne attempted to name Rupert Murdoch in the separate lawsuit against the Sun. The court won’t allow it.

The Duke of Sussex has been criticised for trying to shoot at “trophy targets” as he has lost an application to bring new allegations against Rupert Murdoch in his High Court hacking claim against the publisher of The Sun. Mr Justice Fancourt criticised the Duke’s lawyers for trying to “inculpate the man at the very top” by pinning knowledge on the media mogul personally. He warned: “This cannot become an end in itself: it only matters to the court so far as it is material and proportionate to the resolution of the individual causes of action. The trial is not an inquiry.”

The Duke was also denied a request to extend his claim by including allegations that date back to 1994. The Prince and more than 40 others are suing News Group Newspapers (NGN) and the News Of The World, over alleged unlawful information gathering and invasion of privacy. A trial has been scheduled for January 2025. He was refused permission to include the names of some 150 private investigators, some of which had no specific claims made against them.

Barrister David Sherborne had sought to amend the claim against NGN to make specific allegations about the “destruction and concealment” of evidence by certain individuals. His proposed updates included the naming of several journalists and senior executives, including Mr Murdoch. The judge also refused permission for allegations to be newly made against NGN’s Management and Standards Committee and those relating to the targeting of politicians.

The judge added: “Tempting though it no doubt is for the claimants’ team to attempt to inculpate the man at the very top, doing so will add nothing to a finding that Ms Brooks and Mr James Murdoch or other senior executives knew and were involved, if that is proved to be the case.”

The judge said that the allegations made “directly made against Rupert Murdoch personally” added nothing to the Duke’s claim. He said: “I cannot see what difference is made to the allegations of habitual and extensive unlawful information gathering (UIG), knowledge on the part of senior executives, and concealment and destruction, by trying to pin actual knowledge on him personally. There are already allegations pleaded against Rebekah Brooks and James Murdoch, who are his trusted lieutenants in relation to News Corporation and NGN and who are very senior executives in their own right.”

The judge criticised the Duke’s legal team for trying to bring forward too many amendments at too late a stage, in what he described as a “very expensive and time consuming exercise”. He also criticised NGN for failing to concede enough of the lesser amendments.

[From The Telegraph]

While I don’t know all of the ins and outs of Harry’s case, there is one salient point which I think is getting lost in the fray: it wasn’t *just* that these tabloids were hacking and breaking the law to stalk their targets, it’s that those tabloids and tabloid editors spent years covering up their crimes and lying about it. The tabloids want to point to the Leveson Inquiry in 2012 as the end of everything – instead, the tabloids spent years post-Leveson actively obfuscating and lying about their crimes (in addition to still committing hacking crimes). Anyway, while Harry has had some good wins with these cases, make no mistake – there are very powerful people in the UK who do not want Harry tugging at these strings. It sounds like the judge is not making his rulings based on law, but on the fear of just how thoroughly powerful people could be exposed.

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