Prince Harry feels targeted for ‘standing up’ to Daily Mail publisher, court hears | Prince Harry

The high court heard the Duke of Sussex believes he faces a “sustained campaign of attacks” for having the “courage to stand up” to the Daily Mail publisher.

Prince Harry’s lawyers filed a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers Ltd, which publishes the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. expressed Prince Harry’s claim by publishing 14 articles that they claimed were obtained by illegal information collection by .

Lawyer David Sherborne, who represents the duke, and six others prominent in the case claimed flight details and sensitive information that could have serious consequences for Harry’s safety were illegally obtained.

“In his evidence for the hearing, the Duke of Sussex speaks of the impact this situation had on him, the distress, the paranoia and other emotions it created,” Sherborne told the high court in London.

“But given what we’ve seen, is it any wonder that he feels this way, or that he feels, as he has explained, that he has endured a sustained campaign of attacks against him for having the audacity to oppose Associated in the way he has publicly done?”

The duke’s concern about his treatment was revealed when Sherborne laid out key parts of the case against the publisher. He highlighted articles that he said bore “signs of illegal information gathering.”

Harry was in court again to hear the case before giving evidence on Thursday. 14 articles about the duke were published between 2001 and 2013. Many featured the signatures of former Mail on Sunday royal correspondent Katie Nicholl or Daily Mail royal editor Rebecca English.

An article citing a “family source” revealed that Harry’s former nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke had been chosen as his child’s godfather. Sherborne said that no one in the family, including King Charles, was told about this situation.

Nicholl said the source could have been the queen’s cousin Elizabeth Anson, who was 40 years older than Legge-Bourke, or socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, who has since died.

Other stories included details of Harry’s relationship with ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy. Sherborne told the court that private investigator Mike Behr was paid £200 in cash by the British in return for a “Chelsy tip” which included Davy’s full flight details.

Sherborne said another article published in 2010 contained “private and intimate details” of Harry’s private life, including his “preferences for where he likes to spend the night.” He said the details could not have come from a legitimate source.

In a written submission, Sherborne said Nicholl’s evidence was that his indirect source for information about Davy was the late Garth Gibbs, “an elderly retired journalist who lived alone with a cat on the Isle of Wight and left South Africa in 1966, 20 years before Miss Davy was born”.

He said the statement “stretches his credibility and should be rejected accordingly.”

Associated’s legal team said in written submissions that the stories were obtained “entirely legitimately, from a range of information provided by individuals from the Duke of Sussex’s social circle, press officers and journalists, freelance journalists, photographers and contacts of responsible journalists, including previous reports”.

Antony White, who is leading Associated’s defence, said the duke’s social circle was “known and a good source for leaks or disclosure of information to the media about what he does in his private life”.

He told the court that “previous widespread news” played a role in the articles in question. “These articles don’t just appear out of nowhere,” he said. “The articles largely build on what has been previously reported.”

White said it was striking that Associated’s nearly “entire roster” of journalists “lined up to give evidence of the allegations against them.” He said the fact that so many people appeared, including long-time Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, “speaks volumes about the culture” of the publisher.

White said there were “very serious allegations” against a number of journalists, all of whom had lied about their activities and information. He said it was improbable.

He said Associated’s top figures “will emphatically deny” that Associated engaged in illegal activities to obtain the story. An effective ban on the use of private detectives was introduced by Dacre in 2007, White said.

He said the plaintiffs presented “little evidence” of illegal activities carried out by private investigators paid by Associated journalists. He also said that “for the most part” there was nothing linking the payment to the private investigator to the content of the story or the journalist who wrote it.

He said the plaintiffs’ case was “predictive.”

He also said much of the plaintiffs’ evidence of illegal activity was derived from evidence in previous cases against the publishers of the Daily Mirror and the Sun. He said the evidence should not have been allowed in the case against Associated Newspapers.

For the plaintiffs, Sherborne also sought to address Associated Newspapers’ claim that they waited too long to make claims, noting that they each learned they had a serious case against the publisher after the October 2016 deadline for legal action.

He also said the claim that the plaintiffs’ legal team engineered “turning point moments” to ensure the case could be filed was “offensive as well as misunderstood and untrue.”

The trial continues.