Global Courant
By Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) – Prince Harry should receive a maximum of just £500 ($637) in damages for one admitted case of unlawful information gathering, lawyers representing a British tabloid newspaper group told London’s High Court on Tuesday.
Harry, the youngest son of King Charles, is one of more than 100 people suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the publishers of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, over charges of phone hacking and unlawful collecting of information.
Their lawyers claim that illegal activity was “widespread” in all three MGN newspapers between 1991 and 2011.
The fifth in line to the throne spent a day and a half on the witness stand earlier this month, facing allegations that he had been unlawfully targeted by MGN titles for 15 years from 1996 when he was a child.
His cross-examination, when he became the first senior British royal to appear on a witness stand in more than 130 years, began with an apology from MGN’s lawyer Andrew Green for one instance of unlawful information gathering.
MGN admitted at the start of its trial in May, which concludes this week, that on one occasion a private investigator was called in to collect unlawful evidence on Harry at a London nightclub in 2004, for which it “apologises unreservedly”.
However, the publisher argued in court documents released Tuesday that Harry “has not identified any evidence of voicemail interception against him, nor any other evidence of unlawful information gathering related to his private information,” aside from the one incident it has admitted. .
“The Duke of Sussex should be paid a maximum of £500 as the single bill on which he is named relates to an incidental inquiry and the small amount on the bill – £75 – suggests the inquiry was limited,” said Green.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Sarah Young)
