Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday journalists provide a “compelling account of a pattern of legitimate sourcing of articles”, the High Court has been told by the papers’ publisher in a case brought by household names including the Duke of Sussex.
Harry, Sir Elton John, his husband David Furnish, campaigner Baroness Doreen Lawrence, politician Sir Simon Hughes, and actresses Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley are all bringing legal action against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over allegations of unlawful information gathering.
This includes claims that information for articles was obtained by carrying out or commissioning unlawful activities such as phone tapping and “blagging” private records.
ANL has strongly denied wrongdoing and is defending the claims.
Harry attended the start of the second day of the trial in London on Tuesday, and was seen leaving the Royal Courts of Justice during the lunch break.
At the start of his opening submissions, ANL’s barrister Antony White KC told the court that journalists at the organisation provide a “compelling account of a pattern of legitimate sourcing of articles”.
He said: “Associated, the defendant, defends these claims on two main grounds: firstly on the merits and secondly on limitation grounds.
“Associated has provided an explanation through a long series of witnesses of the sourcing by its journalists of the 50-plus articles alleged by the claimants to be the product of unlawful information gathering.
“We don’t pretend that that account is perfect and covers every detail, and not every journalist can remember every article, but we do say that, overall, it provides a compelling account of a pattern of legitimate sourcing of articles.”
Mr White said in written submissions that the celebrities bringing legal action had “leaky” social circles and that information also came from sources including spokespeople and previous reporting.
The barrister later told the court that payments to private investigators, used in the claims of the household names, were “examples of clutching at straws in the wind and seeking to bind them together in a way that has no proper analytical foundation”.
He added: “Associated is not a corner shop. It is audited. Auditors usually do not miss the haemorrhaging of large amounts of cash of this size.”
Multiple journalists and editors from Associated are expected to give evidence at the High Court, including former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre.
However David Sherborne, for the household names, said that part of ANL’s defence, that the claims have been brought too late, is a “potential life raft in a sea of unlawful information gathering”, but that the publisher may not “be able to climb aboard”.
During his opening submissions, he told the court that all seven of the group, who began their legal action against ANL in 2022, discovered that they had “worthwhile” claims after 2016, meaning the claims had been brought in time.
Mr Sherborne also said that ANL executives gave “robust and at times aggressive denials” of any wrongdoing at the Leveson Inquiry.
He continued that the publisher has denied “without exception not only any wrongdoing, but any evidence of it” in the legal claims.
He said: “We say it is Associated’s position in this which is preposterous and a particularly disgraceful one for the claimants to stomach, victims who have already suffered at the defendant’s hands.”
Addressing Harry’s claim, Mr Sherborne said that the duke, who is due to give evidence on Thursday, had detailed the “distress” and “paranoia” he had been caused.
Mr Sherborne continued: “But given what we’ve seen, is it any wonder that he feels that way, or as he explains, that he feels he has endured a sustained campaign of attacks against him for having had the temerity to stand up to Associated in the way that he has so publicly done.”
The barrister later said there were 14 articles in Harry’s claim, “which feature what we say are the hallmarks of unlawful information gathering”.
Mr Sherborne told the court the articles, written between 2001 and 2013, “focus primarily and in a highly intrusive and damaging way, on the relationships which he formed, or rather tried to form, during those years prior to meeting his now wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex”.
ANL “strongly denies” that there was any unlawful information gathering, including voicemail interception, directed at the duke or his named associates.
The trial before Mr Justice Nicklin is due to conclude in nine weeks with a judgment in writing at a later date.
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