If Prince Harry wins his phone-hacking claim against Mirror Group Newspapers he will have to thank a legal precedent set by an apprentice chimney sweep more than 300 years ago.
The royal’s case against the newspaper publisher ended on Friday after a seven-week trial, with the prince asking the court to award him more than £440,000 in damages – potentially one of the biggest ever phone-hacking settlements.
The case relates to 33 articles published between 1996 and 2009 that Harry says must have been obtained illegally, through intercepting voicemails or other illegal activity. The judge, who is expected to deliver his verdict in the autumn, could award additional aggravated damages if he finds in the prince’s favour and then concludes the articles caused significant distress.
The trial forced the world’s media to re-examine the excesses of the British tabloid newspapers – as well as the roles of the former Mirror editor Piers Morgan and the network of private investigators willing to do almost anything for an exclusive story.
When Harry gave evidence earlier this month he became the first royal in 130 years to appear in a witness box, describing how press intrusion destroyed his relationships and left him with “bouts of depression and paranoia”. He came close to tears, insisting there was “hard evidence” he was illegally targeted by the Mirror’s journalists and would feel “some injustice” if he lost the case.
Harry’s challenge is that, during two months of legal debate, the court saw no conclusive proof that his mobile phone voicemails were intercepted by journalists working for the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, or People. Invoices were produced showing that private investigators targeted the prince, though with one minor exception, the Mirror denies that necessarily showed they were acting illegally.
No journalists gave evidence to say that they hacked Harry’s voicemails. No call data from the Mirror to Harry’s mobile phone was found, even though it has been discovered in many comparable cases. No one admitted digging up illegal information on the prince.
Instead, the main direct evidence that Harry was a victim of illegal activity by the Mirror is that his mobile number was in the personal organiser of one journalist, a number of call records to his friends, and sets of invoices to private investigators for research on the prince and his associates.
Instead, his case is largely circumstantial, relying on the general culture at the Mirror’s newspapers and the existence of mysteriously attributed information in articles about the prince. Both sides acknowledge that intrusive phone hacking of celebrities’ voicemails was widespread at the Mirror’s newspapers in the 2000s. And there is no dispute that the Mirror’s newspapers published many articles about the prince’s private life, which he found intrusive.
But making the final jump that the Mirror’s stories about Harry came from illegal sources is harder.
This is where the young chimney sweep from Georgian London comes in. In 1722 an apprentice named Armory found a piece of jewellery and took it to a goldsmith to be valued. The goldsmith swiped the gemstones and handed back the empty metal case to the apprentice. In a subsequent court case the judge ruled that in the absence of the original jewels, it must be assumed that they were of the highest possible value that would fit the empty sockets where the jewels once sat.
David Sherborne, Harry’s barrister, cited the chimney sweep’s case in support of Prince Harry and the other individuals in the trial. He told the high court that key evidence that would support Harry’s claim is missing because it has been destroyed on purpose. He said millions of emails had been deleted, burner phones had been disposed of, and key witnesses such as Piers Morgan were not called to give evidence. He said this left “enormous holes – we say fatal holes – in the defendant’s case”.
Andrew Green KC, the Mirror’s barrister, argued there simply never was any evidence that Harry was targeted illegally by Mirror Group Newspapers. He said the newspaper publisher has been swept up in Harry’s broader battles with the British media.
The case – in which Harry was just one of about 100 individuals bringing claims – has been heard without a jury, meaning the only opinion that matters is that of Mr Justice Fancourt. He is expected to deliver his verdict later this year, with no updates until then.
What is less clear is what victory looks like for Harry and whether the trial alone counts as vindication. Previous phone-hacking legal hearings have been attended by a small number of reporters while his appearance attracted hundreds of journalists, camera crews, and photographers from around the world.
One potential outcome is a messy verdict where all sides lose to some degree. Harry could be defeated on the phone-hacking aspects of his claim while still being found, on the balance of probabilities, to have been illegally targeted by private investigators. The Mirror could win on some specifics but lose its attempt to stop future phone-hacking claims that are already likely to cost the company about £150m. A number of other individuals could have their reputations sullied in a judgment that could make fresh rulings on who knew what about phone hacking.
But by the time we know the result of this case, Harry could already have moved on. The prince is waiting to find out whether judges will let him proceed with two entirely separate phone-hacking claims against the publisher of the Sun and the publisher of the Daily Mail. If they go ahead, he is likely to return to court to give evidence early next year.
