ROYAL FAMILY
Prince Harry receives apology amidst privacy breach trial
The ‘Mirror’ publishers apologized to the Duke of Sussex after the prince took the company to court.
Prince Harry has received a formal apology from Mirror Group Newspapers in the midst of the prince’s court case, alongside several other celebrity defendants, where he is suing the publishers for illegal information gathering.
The case involves 148 articles published about Prince Harry between 1996 and 2010, as per the BBC.
What is the deal with the court case?
The lawsuit against the publishers affiliated with the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Express, is taking place this week in a London court.
The 38-year-old prince and four other claimants are “representative [...] test cases” for a much larger collection of high-profile people who are suing MGN for alleged unlawful information gathering, as per The Independent.
The formal apology
The MGN formal apology appeared in court filings Wednesday as the trial proceedings continue.
“[Mirror Group Newspapers] unreservedly apologizes” for one count of unlawful information gathering against the Duke of Sussex.
The particular instance referred to in the apology surrounds a private investigator following the prince to a London nightclub in 2004.
“MGN unreservedly apologizes for all such instances of UIG and assures the claimants that such conduct will never be repeated,” the full statement reads.
What about the phone hacking?
However, MGN continues to deny voicemail-hacking allegations, arguing that too much time has passed to warrant consequence.
The Duke of Sussex’s attorney, David Sherborne submitted a written statement outlining the phone-hacking claims.
“[Prince Harry] experienced unusual telephone and media-related activity which is consistent, now in hindsight but at the time unsuspected, with the unauthorized accessing of his voicemails and other unlawful information gathering,” the statement reads.
The attorney added that Prince Harry received so many unrecognizable missed calls and hang-ups “on an almost daily basis from numbers he did not recognize.”
“This unlawful activity, including in particular knowing where the Duke of Sussex was going to be at a given time and the widespread dissemination amongst MGN’s journalists of private information relating to him, posed a very real and large-scale security risk for the Duke of Sussex, his family and his associates,” Sherborne argued.