On Tuesday, Prince Harry is expected to become the first senior royal to testify in court in more than a century, but when the high-profile trial regarding his suit against Mirror Group Newspapers continued on Monday morning, the prince wasn’t in the courtroom. According to the New York Post, Judge Timothy Fancourt had instructed him to appear. “I’m a little surprised,” the judge said.
Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne told the High Court that his client had flown from the US on Sunday night, and was unable to make it to court. “His travel arrangements are such and his security arrangements are such that it is a little bit tricky,” he added, per Reuters.
The suit against the newspaper group, which owns the the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and Sunday People, is one of multiple cases that the prince is pursuing against publishers over allegations of illegal information gathering. Harry has alleged that 140 articles published by the three newspapers between 1996 and 2010 were obtained using illegal information-gathering tactics, and 33 of those articles were selected for examination in the case. The prince is one of a handful of plaintiffs who will be heard over the course of the trial.
Despite Harry’s absence on Monday, Sherborne laid out some of the issues we can expect Harry to speak to during his testimony, including the impact certain stories in the news group’s titles had on his relationships and mental health. The lawyer mentioned the impact that press coverage had on his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy. “It was as if they were never alone,” Sherborne said, pointing to an April 2005 story in the People detailing the prince’s phone calls to Davy. “The ups and downs and ins and outs of their relationship, the beginning, the break-ups, and finally the split between them were all revealed and picked apart by the three Mirror Group titles.”
Sherborne noted that roughly 2,500 stories about Harry had run in MGN titles during the period his allegations cover. “Nothing was sacrosanct or out of bounds, and there was no protection from these unlawful information-gathering methods,” he added, pointing to stories about Princess Diana. “It is the use of these methods by a national media group that has brought him here, not some vendetta against the press generally.”
A lawyer representing MGN, Andrew Green, replied that Harry’s allegations regarding voicemail messages is speculation without evidence. At the start of the trial last month, MGN apologized for one specific time the People had illegally sought information about Harry, but denied that there was evidence to suspect the practice was widespread.
Harry’s travel for the trial marks his third trip to the UK so far this year, and he quickly returned home after King Charles’s coronation last month so he could celebrate his son Archie’s fourth birthday. Lilibet, the daughter Harry shares with wife, Meghan Markle, celebrated her second birthday on Sunday, June 4.
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Erin Vanderhoof
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