Prince Harry has hailed a “great day for truth” after winning substantial damages in his hacking case against the Daily Mirror, in a judgment that will have profound implications for the British media.
On Friday a judge ruled there was “extensive” phone hacking by Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) from 2006 to 2011, “even to some extent” during the Leveson inquiry into media standards.
Mr Justice Fancourt found that unlawful information gathering was “widespread” at all three Mirror Group titles, while the use of private investigators was an “integral part of the system”.
In a dramatic day at the high court, the judge ruled there could be “no doubt” that Piers Morgan, the Mirror’s editor between 1995 and 2004, and other senior executives knew about the practice.
Reading a statement outside his home, Morgan furiously denied he was aware of phone hacking during his time as editor.
In an extraordinary personal attack, the TalkTV presenter said the Duke of Sussex “wouldn’t know truth if it slapped him in his California-tanned face”, and claimed Harry and his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, were trying to “destroy the British monarchy”.
Morgan said he had not been asked to provide a statement to the court and was unable “to respond to the many false allegations that were spewed about me in court by old foes”. He said he had “never hacked a phone” while editor or told anyone else to, adding: “Nobody has provided any actual evidence to prove that I did.”
After the ruling, Harry called for UK authorities, including the Metropolitan police and the Crown Prosecution Service, “to do their duty for the British public and investigate bringing charges against the company and those who have broken the law”. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said it would “carefully consider” the civil judgment.
Since the Guardian broke the UK’s phone-hacking scandal, which led to the closure of the tabloid newspaper the News of the World in 2011, newspapers have paid out millions in settlements to victims of illegal news gathering, but few cases have come to court.
Fancourt said MGN had concealed unlawful activity from parliament, shareholders and the public and had emerged “largely unscathed” from the government-appointed Leveson inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press from 2011 to 2012 sparked by the phone-hacking revelations.
The judge said MGN failed “to make full disclosure” to the inquiry, adding that a decision had been taken “at a high level” that the publisher’s interests “were best served by keeping a lid on as much as possible of what had happened”.
Its claim that it did not have the ability to investigate allegations of unlawful activity was “simply untrue”, he said.
“Even today, MGN is not being open about the extent to which voicemail interception and unlawful information gathering went on at its newspapers,” the judge said.
Fancourt found that 15 out of 33 articles related to Harry, which were focused on during the trial, were the product of phone hacking or unlawful information gathering.
He concluded that Harry’s phone was hacked “to a modest extent” from the end of 2003 to April 2009, with the practice carefully controlled by senior individuals at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People newspapers.
Recognising the “distress” caused to Harry, the judge awarded him £140,600 in damages.
Harry was not in court to hear the judgment, but his lawyer, David Sherborne, read a statement on his behalf outside the high court.
Comparing the result to “slaying of dragons”, Harry said in the statement: “Today is a great day for truth, as well as accountability.
“The court has ruled that unlawful and criminal activities were carried out at all three Mirror group newspaper titles – the Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the People – on a habitual and widespread basis for over more than a decade.
“This case is not just about hacking – it is about a systemic practice of unlawful and appalling behaviour, followed by cover-ups and destruction of evidence, the shocking scale of which can only be revealed through these proceedings.”
An MGN spokesperson said: “We welcome today’s judgment that gives the business the necessary clarity to move forward from events that took place many years ago. Where historical wrongdoing took place, we apologise unreservedly, have taken full responsibility and paid appropriate compensation.”
During a dramatic seven-week trial at the high court this year, Harry became the first royal in 130 years to appear in a witness box at the trial.
He told the court that British newspapers had illegally targeted him all his life and gone to “extreme lengths to cover their tracks”. He described how press intrusion destroyed his relationships and left him with “bouts of depression and paranoia”.
The judge said Harry had shown a “tendency … to assume that everything published was the product of voicemail interception because phone hacking was rife within Mirror Group at the time”, but his claims in relation to 18 articles “did not stand up to careful analysis”.
He added that MGN was not responsible for all the unlawful activity directed at Harry and “a good deal of the oppressive behaviour of the press towards the duke over the years was not unlawful at all”.
The judge ruled that unlawful investigations began in 1995 and were widespread from 1996 onwards; phone hacking began in 1996 and was “widespread and habitual” from 1998. He added that senior editors were aware of the activity but “the editors of the three newspapers did not report what they knew”.
The activity was more controlled from 2006 – after the arrest of the News of the World’s former royal editor Clive Goodman – but “remained an important tool for the kind of journalism being practised” until 2011.
Of the 51 investigators used by the publisher and mentioned in court, Fancourt found that 11 were “very substantially” involved in unlawful information-gathering for journalists and editors.
The judge ruled that key figures at the newspaper group, some of whom now hold senior roles at other organisations, were aware or likely aware of illegal activity, including Richard Wallace, now Morgan’s boss at Murdoch-owned TalkTV, and Gary Jones, now the editor of the Daily Express.
He said that while most of the directors of Trinity Mirror plc – the former name for MGN – did not know about illegal activity, two did. Paul Vickers, the group legal director, “certainly knew about phone hacking from about the end of 2003” while the ex-Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey knew of hacking and “turned a blind eye”.
The executives “knew about the illegal activity that was going at their newspapers and could and should have put a stop to it. Instead of doing so, they turned a blind eye to what was going on, and positively concealed it,” he said.
The judge awarded Harry damages for each article that had used unlawful activity and an additional amount “to compensate the duke fully for the distress that he suffered as a result of the unlawful activity directed at him and those close to him”.
He added aggravated damages “to reflect the particular hurt and sense of outrage” felt by Harry because Bailey and others knew of the illegal activity.
Harry was the most high-profile of more than 100 claimants – including the singer Cheryl and the estate of George Michael – who were involved in the wider litigation. Harry’s case, which was used as one of four test cases to establish facts that can be used to award damages to other complainants, was heard alongside claims brought by the Coronation Street actors Michael Turner and Nikki Sanderson, and Fiona Wightman, the former wife of the comedian Paul Whitehouse.
Turner was awarded £31,650 in damages after he also brought a phone-hacking claim against the publisher; Sanderson and Wightman had their claims dismissed because they were made too late.
Harry is known to have also had his phone hacked by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and is bringing two separate phone-hacking cases against the publisher of the Sun – which will begin in January – and the publisher of the Daily Mail.
