With A-list clients including Paul McCartney and Johnny Depp, barrister David Sherborne is no stranger to high-profile cases.
He has even represented the late Princess Diana - and now it’s Prince Harry’s turn, as the Duke of Sussex takes his long-running battle with the British press to the High Court.
An expert in privacy law and defamation, Mr Sherborne is acting for Harry and other claimants taking on Mirror Group Newspaper (MGN) and News Group Newspapers over alleged phone-hacking.
Mr Sherborne claims both publishers made payments, totalling millions of pounds, to private investigators to report private stories about celebrities and that the invoices were authorised at the highest levels, which MGN denies.
A US-native, Mr Sherborne came to attention in the UK again for his role in the Levenson Inquiry, representing a host of celebrities who had their phones hacked by the now-defunct News of the World.
According to his online professional profile on 5RB, Mr Sherborne is “particularly well-known in the industry and press for his extensive reputation management practice, as well as his ground-breaking pre-publication injunction work.”
Mr Sherborne is responsible for a number of “landmark privacy cases”, including Douglas v Hello. Actors Michael Douglas and wife Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2003 successfully claimed damages against Hello! magazine over unauthorised pictures of their wedding.
Mr Justice Lindsay ruled that the Douglases’ wedding was a private event and that Hello! had acted “unconscionably” by publishing snatched photographs of the couple without their permission.
The magazine’s claim to freedom of expression, said the judge, was not a “trump card” and was in this case overridden by the manner in which the Hollywood couple’s confidential agreement with OK! magazine had been breached by Hello! The judge found against the couple on a number of other issues.
Mr Sherborne also represented Coleen Rooney in her “Wagatha Christie” libel action against Rebekah Vardy - a case that also attracted significant media attention.
Fellow lawyers who watched Mr Sherborne’s three-day cross-examination of Ms Vardy last year witnessed the best and worst of his style, describing it as a mixture of “undoubted charm”, “showboating” and “frequently p***ing off the judge”, The Guardian reported.
The barrister has also generated a few headlines of his own. A complaint was made against Mr Sherborne over allegations that he had a relationship with another lawyer involved in the Leveson inquiry.
Mr Sherborne, twice married, and Patry Hoskins, counsel for the inquiry who was married when they met, said their relationship did not begin until after the Leveson report was published in November 2012.
The pair, who went on holiday to Italy after the trial, became an official couple after the case was published.
The complaint was dismissed by the Bar Standards Board, which said there was no “realistic prospect” that a disciplinary tribunal would make a finding of professional misconduct.
