Prince Harry's court fiasco continues in London, but the Duke suffered a major blow recently when a judge dismissed his phone hacking claims against News Group Newspapers (NGN).
"In arguing his case, the Duke of Sussex had alleged a 'secret agreement' existed between him/Buckingham Palace, and NGN, which stopped NGN from asserting that the Duke's claim had been brought too late. The judge, Mr. Justice Fancourt, found his claims in relation to the alleged 'secret agreement' were not plausible or credible," a spokesperson for NGN told an outlet.
Harry once said of journalists working for NGN, "The evidence I have seen shows that Associated’s journalists are criminals with journalistic powers, which should concern every single one of us. The British public deserves to know the full extent of this cover-up, and I feel it is my duty to expose it."
Many have criticized the fifth in line to the throne's talk of a covert deal that would have to have been, at the very least, signed off on by the late Queen Elizabeth II as the head of the monarchy back in 2012. But a summary of Fancourt's ruling, as provided by the defendant's spokesperson, shows "there was never any such agreement, and it is only the Duke who has ever asserted there was."
The main reason the Montecito royal lost the phone hacking portion of his suit against NGN was that he was "too late" in bringing the claim to court. This essentially means the Duke lost on this portion due to a technicality related to timing, although Harry previously claimed the Buckingham Palace agreement was solely in place to prevent him from pursuing the matter before the six-year window to file a civil suit expired.
OK! previously reported how a member of the King's Counsel in the case characterized Harry's assertion of an agreement as "Alice in Wonderland" stuff. "This agreement is such a secret agreement that no one apart from the claimant [the Duke] knows about it. It is a bizarre situation. He has not put forward any evidence to demonstrate the reaching or the making of the agreement in 2012," Anthony Hudson, KC, said in a statement.
The attorney went on to observe that "there is not a single shred of evidence. There is a gaping hole in the claimant’s case that is not dependent on NGN disclosure." In his witness statement, Harry said that the work of the group's newspaper journalists had left him feeling "helpless and hopeless."
The development was not a total loss for the Duke, since Fancourt ruled that Harry's remaining grievances and claims could progress to the next stage. These allegations are the prince's accusations of "unlawful information gathering" on the part of NGN and will be heard in a trial set for January 2024.
Newsweek reported on the NGN spokesperson's statement.
