Prince Harry, Elton John and other public figures were victims of systematic phone hacking and other unlawful acts by Britain’s powerful Daily Mail, their lawyer said yesterday as the trial of their high-profile privacy case against the publisher began.
The British royal and six other claimants accuse the Mail’s publisher Associated Newspapers of unlawful behaviour violating their privacy from 1993 until 2011 and beyond, in a civil case with high stakes for the claimants and media alike.
Harry, 41, who arrived smiling and waving, said in a witness statement quoted by lawyers that it was “disturbing to feel that my every move, thought or feeling was being tracked and monitored just for the Mail to make money out of it”.
Associated, however, calls the allegations ‘preposterous smears’, saying their journalists had legitimate sources for information, including celebrities’ ‘leaky’ social circles.
The publisher also alleges the litigation is part of a coordinated conspiracy by a wealthy group driven by personal animosity towards the media.
The nine-week trial will not just put reputations on the line, in a case with legal costs running to tens of millions of pounds, but could open up a new front in long-running litigation over the practices of the British Press.
Harry, singer John and the other claimants – John’s husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, anti-racism campaigner Doreen Lawrence and former legislator Simon Hughes – will argue investigators routinely obtained material unlawfully.
Harry, Hurley, Frost and Hughes attended the trial’s first day, with John, Furnish and Lawrence following online.
&uuid=(email))