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Prince Harry cast himself as the \u201clast person\u201d<\/a> who could hold Britain\u2019s tabloids to account<\/a> for years of predatory conduct during the phone hacking scandal. On Wednesday, he settled for a partial victory in his lonely campaign.<\/p>\n Harry settled a long-running lawsuit with Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News Group Newspapers over unlawful information gathering, winning a multimillion dollar payout and, perhaps more significantly, an admission of \u201cunlawful\u201d conduct<\/a> by private investigators hired by The Sun, the company\u2019s flagship tabloid.<\/p>\n But the settlement averted what could have been weeks of damaging testimony about phone hacking and other unlawful practices News Group used more than a decade ago to ferret out personal information about Harry and other prominent figures. Harry, who did not appear in court on Wednesday, was scheduled to take the stand next month.<\/p>\n It also marked the end of an era of high-profile legal cases stemming from the hacking scandal, a dark period in the history of British media, and gave Harry a long-awaited acknowledgment of the tabloids\u2019 acute intrusion into the life of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in a car accident in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by photographers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n News Group Newspapers offered a \u201cfull and unequivocal apology\u201d<\/a> for hacking his cellphone and intruding into his personal life and that of Diana, \u201cin particular during his younger years.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe acknowledge and apologize for the distress caused to the duke, and the damage inflicted on relationships, friendships and family, and have agreed to pay him substantial damages,\u201d the company said in a contrite, five-paragraph statement, referring to Harry by his formal title, the Duke of Sussex.<\/p>\n The settlement, announced a day after the trial was set to begin in a London High Court, spared Harry, 40, the younger son of King Charles III, from heavy financial risk. Under English law, aimed at resolving disputes out of court where possible, Harry would have been required to pay the legal costs of both sides unless the court awarded him an amount equal to what News Group offered him in the settlement.<\/p>\n While neither side disclosed the amount of the financial settlement, it was worth at least 10 million pounds ($12.3 million), according to two people with knowledge of the negotiation. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the parties had agreed not to disclose the number.<\/p>\n The last minute deal underscored the unforgiving economics for private individuals taking on deep-pocketed corporations in Britain. Mr. Murdoch\u2019s companies have used lucrative payoffs to avert trials in 1,300 cases stemming from the phone hacking scandal. Harry\u2019s elder brother, Prince William, settled for a \u201chuge sum of money\u201d in 2020, according to a filing by Harry in his own case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In April<\/a>, the actor Hugh Grant said that he had felt forced to settle his hacking case against News Group Newspapers because \u201ceven if every allegation is proven in court, I would still be liable for something approaching 10 million pounds in costs. I\u2019m afraid I am shying at that fence.\u201d<\/p>\n In the United States, Mr. Murdoch\u2019s Fox News paid $787.5 million in April 2023<\/a> to settle a defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over the cable network\u2019s promotion of false claims about Dominion\u2019s voting machines in the 2020 election.<\/p>\n News Group Newspapers said Wednesday that after a decade of hacking-related lawsuits, the settlement \u201cdraws a line under the past and brings an end to this litigation.\u201d It noted that the judge in the case, Timothy Fancourt, said these cases were the last with a good chance of getting to trial.<\/p>\n News Group also apologized and paid damages to Harry\u2019s fellow plaintiff, Tom Watson, a former deputy leader of the Labour Party, for what it described as \u201cthe unwarranted intrusion\u201d into his private life by The News of The World between 2009 and 2011, during his time in government. The company admitted he had been \u201cplaced under surveillance\u201d in 2009 by the tabloid.<\/p>\n Mr. Murdoch shut down The News of the World in 2011 after it emerged that the paper had illegally hacked the voice mail of a murdered schoolgirl<\/a>. Until now, though, the company had never acknowledged wrongdoing by anyone at The Sun. News Group emphasized that the admission of unlawful conduct referred to private investigators hired by the paper between 1996 and 2011, not to its journalists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Still, the acknowledgment is significant because Rebekah Brooks, the current chief executive of News U.K., was the editor of The Sun from 2003 to 2009 and had described it to a parliamentary hearing on phone hacking as a \u201cvery clean ship.\u201d<\/a> Ms. Brooks has denied all wrongdoing and was cleared of criminal charges in a hacking case in 2014.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the first time in this long running litigation, and despite repeated previous denials, the flagship Murdoch title, The Sun, has had to make an unprecedented admission,\u201d said Daniel Taylor, a media lawyer who has represented plaintiffs in other hacking cases. \u201cIt hired private investigators to carry out unlawful activities in relation to Prince Harry.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement did not directly refer to Will Lewis<\/a>, a former senior executive at News U.K. who is now the publisher of the Washington Post, but one paragraph raised questions about his role. In 2011, when the police were investigating the allegations of phone hacking and unlawful activity at News U.K., they confronted the company about why certain emails had been abruptly removed from its servers. Mr. Lewis told the police<\/a> that the company removed them after receiving an unsubstantiated tip that Gordon Brown, a former prime minister, was plotting with allies, including Mr. Watson, to steal the emails of Ms. Brooks.<\/p>\n In its apology to Mr. Watson, News Group admitted there were no grounds for that claim. \u201cIn 2011 News International received information that information was being passed covertly to Lord Watson from within News International. We now understand that this information was false, and Lord Watson was not in receipt of any such confidential information,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n Mr. Watson said in an interview last year that the claim had been \u201cdeliberately concocted by News International in an attempt to justify the destruction and concealment of millions of relevant emails during a criminal investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A spokesman for Mr. Lewis cited a statement he gave to The Times last June, in which he said, \u201cAny allegations of wrongdoing are untrue.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking outside the courthouse after the settlement was announced, Mr. Watson said he would hand the police a dossier of evidence of wrongdoing. \u201cI once said that the big beasts of the tabloid jungle have no predators,\u201d he said. \u201cI was wrong. They have Prince Harry. His bravery and astonishing courage have brought accountability to a part of the media that thought it was untouchable.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, the settlement means that Harry will not testify about his treatment at the hands of Mr. Murdoch\u2019s tabloids \u2014 something he did to dramatic effect in 2023, in a similar case against Mirror Group Newspapers, which he won. Nor will his lawyers present what they claim was widespread and deeply rooted misconduct at Mr. Murdoch\u2019s tabloids.<\/p>\n In addition to intercepting voice mail messages and purging emails, Harry\u2019s lawyers planned to argue that senior News Group editors encouraged journalists to misrepresent themselves to get access to intimate details about Harry, a practice known as \u201cblagging.\u201d<\/p>\n For Harry, resolving the case could remove a source of friction between him and his father and brother. Last year, he told ITV News that disagreements over how to deal with the tabloids had deepened the rift with his family, which was also rooted in the family\u2019s treatment of his wife, Meghan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Harry sharply criticized Charles and William for a \u201csecret agreement,\u201d under which the family agreed to defer legal claims against the publisher to avoid having to testify about embarrassing details from their intercepted voice mail messages. While Harry brought charges, he has now agreed to a similar accommodation.<\/p>\n In a summary of their planned argument, lawyers for Harry cited a text message he wrote to William in 2019, in which he said that he was \u201cfed up with Pa\u2019s office continually blocking it for us, plus I\u2019ve recently found out the extent of their behaviour and subsequent cover-ups which needs to be exposed.\u201d<\/p>\n Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace, where William has his offices, declined to comment on the settlement. A spokesman for Harry said he would not comment beyond the statement read by Mr. Sherborne.<\/p>\n Jo Becker contributed reporting from Los Angeles<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nAn 11th-hour settlement to avert a trial<\/h2>\n
Unanswered questions<\/h2>\n