This is not about the money paid to Prince Harry, believed to be more than £10m. A huge sum for an individual, yes, but a mere rounding error for Murdoch’s organisation, News Group Newspapers (NGN), who have already paid in excess of £1bn in 1,300 out of court settlements with people – ordinary citizens as well as those in the public eye – who, like Prince Harry, believed their privacy had been invaded by illegal actions at the now defunct News of the World and the very much alive The Sun.
He had been determined not to settle his case out of court. He wanted to put Murdoch’s senior executives on the stand to answer his allegation that phone hacking had been endemic throughout the organisation, and that those at the highest level knew it was happening. To try and prove what Dan Evans, a former News of the World reporter, had said in court in 2014, that “even the office cat knew” about phone hacking.
While we do not know for sure, it is reasonable to assume that at various points in this six-year legal battle, Harry had been offered a sum in settlement by NGN and he had rejected them all. And then, just as his case was to be heard, a harsh reality relating to the rules of civil litigation intruded. Had the judge awarded Harry a penny less in damages than had been offered out of court by NGN, he could have been ordered to pay the legal costs of both sides. No matter if every single word of his allegation had been proven, he’d have had to pay costs which might have been more than £20m. Even for a Prince with a Netflix deal, this was a bit too rich.
Harry, the Lost Boy, is still frozen in astonished aspic
Read MoreHarry, however, got the next best thing, which is why he’s a winner. His apology – “full and unequivocal” – from NGN was further than the organisation had gone before, admitting for the first time that The Sun was party to “serious intrusion… between 1996 and 2011 into his private life”. It is still a live possibility that NGN will face criminal charges.
Harry wasn’t even a teenager when the pursuit of Diana was in full spate. It has shaped his life, overwhelmingly for the worse. Who cannot feel admiration for him today that he has showed the determination to get this acknowledged before the world by others richer and more powerful than him? He was brave to have taken them on, to have seen it through until the system was stacked against him, and, crucially, to have won his fight.
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