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Prince Harry won his phone hacking lawsuit in December against the publisher of the Daily Mirror and was awarded over 140,000 pounds ($180,000) in the first of his several lawsuits against British tabloids to go to trial.
Justice Timothy Fancourt in the High Court found phone hacking was “widespread and habitual” at Mirror Group Newspapers over many years and private investigators “were an integral part of the system” to gather information unlawfully.
He said executives at the papers were aware of the practice and covered it up.
Fancourt said he awarded the Duke of Sussex damages for 15 of the 33 newspaper articles in question at trial that were the result of unlawful information gathering and resulted in the misuse of Harry’s private information.
Harry, the estranged younger son of King Charles III, had sought 440,000 pounds ($560,000) as part of a crusade against the British media that bucked his family’s longstanding aversion to litigation and made him the first senior member of the royal family to testify in court in over a century.
His appearance in the witness box over two days in June created a spectacle as he threw allegations that Mirror Group Newspapers had employed journalists who eavesdropped on voicemails and hired private investigators to use deception and unlawful means to learn about him and other family members.
“I believe that phone hacking was at an industrial scale across at least three of the papers at the time,” Harry asserted in the High Court. “That is beyond any doubt.”
The case is the first of three lawsuits Harry has brought to court against the tabloids over allegations of phone hacking or some form of unlawful information gathering.
They form the front line of attack in what he says is his life’s mission to reform the media.
Harry’s beef with the news media runs deep and is cited throughout his memoir, “Spare.” He blames paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed his mother, Princess Diana, and he said intrusions by journalists led him and his wife, Meghan, to leave royal life for the U.S. in 2020.
This article was provided by The Associated Press.