Murdoch group settled Prince William phone-hacking claim, UK court told

Prince William agreed to settle a phone-hacking claim with a UK media group owned by Rupert Murdoch in 2020 for a “very large” sum, the high court in London heard on Tuesday.

Details of the deal emerged in legal filings as News Group Newspapers, which publishes The Sun, applied to strike out phone-hacking claims by Prince Harry, the Prince of Wales’s brother, and actor Hugh Grant ahead of trial, arguing the lawsuits had been brought too late.

Lawyers for the Duke of Sussex told the high court that he had wanted to bring a claim over voicemail interception against NGN but was made aware of an alleged “secret agreement” between the royal family as an institution and the group not to bring legal action until other high court phone-hacking cases ended.

Prince Harry said the accord was “precisely the reason why I didn’t bring a phone-hacking claim against NGN until 2019″.

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David Sherborne, representing the prince and Hugh Grant, said in written arguments that his client had “had to make public the details of this secret agreement, as well as the fact that his brother, HRH Prince William, has recently settled his claim against NGN behind the scenes”.

He said the Prince of Wales had “had to hold off bringing a claim for years for the same reasons” as his brother, adding that the claim was “settled for a very large sum of money” three years ago.

The Duke of Sussex’s written arguments also alleged that the staff of his father “had a specific long-term strategy to keep the media ... onside in order to smooth the way” for King Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort “to be accepted by the British public” after the death of Queen Elizabeth.

NGN argues that the case should be struck out without trial and that it is “unreal” for Mr Grant and the prince to claim that they did not know about phone hacking and so had ample time to issue a lawsuit within the six-year limit.

It has claimed there was no such “secret agreement” with the royal family. NGN declined to comment on “any confidential settlement with Prince William”.

In a statement to the court, Lord Anthony Grabiner, independent chair of the management and standards committee of News Corp, the parent company of NGN, said he could “confirm with great confidence” that a “secret agreement ... was never mentioned to [him], nor otherwise drawn to [his] attention”.

Sherborne’s disclosure comes days after Murdoch’s US Fox News paid out $787.5 million to settle a libel suit brought by voting machines maker Dominion over claims the TV network broadcast false accusations of election fraud.

The channel on Monday axed its top-rated host Tucker Carlson, who was named in the Dominion case. Media analysts said the move suggested that Murdoch was seeking to prevent the lawsuit from growing to match the phone-hacking scandal in the UK.

NGN has previously rejected allegations of voicemail interception and “other unlawful information gathering” at The Sun, claiming those practices took place only at the now-defunct News of the World.

The paper was shut down in 2011, after it emerged that it had hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Since 2010, its publisher has spent more than $650 million on legal costs relating to phone hacking on the back of a series of out-of-court settlements with claimants.

As well as NGN, Prince Harry is suing Reach, which owns the Daily Mirror newspaper, and Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail. This week’s application by NGN is due to last three days with a ruling expected to be reserved.

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023