LONDON – When Prince Harry appears in court next week as part of his case against a media company he claims engaged in illegal activities, he will make history as the first senior British royal to do so in 130 years.
In connection with the lawsuit he and more than 100 other well-known individuals have filed against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), the company that publishes the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and Sunday People, Harry, the younger son of King Charles, will testify in court in London.
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Since Edward VII appeared as a witness in a divorce case in part in 1870 and in a slander trial involving a card game 20 years later, both of which occurred before he became king, no senior royal has testified in court.
Considering his legal disputes with the British press, the publication of his biography, and the Netflix documentary series in which he accused other senior royals of working with tabloid publications, Harry, who is fifth in line to the throne, has hardly been out of the spotlight during the last six months.
His court appearance is sure to garner notice on a global scale.
Harry is also suing Rupert Murdoch’s Sun tabloid newspaper, which David Yelland, a senior communications adviser, formerly edited. He said that the royal family had long attempted to avoid legal disputes since they were powerless to influence the situation. These situations frequently involve mutually assured annihilation. Nobody will come out looking spectacular, in my opinion,” he remarked.
Harry and three others were chosen as test cases in the lawsuit filed by more than 100 people against MGN.
The trial, which started last month, has been informed that MGN journalists or private investigators hired by them engaged in “industrial-scale” phone hacking and other illegal activities to learn more about the prince and the other plaintiffs.
Senior editors and executives knew about and approved of this, according to the claimants’ attorney David Sherborne. Senior figures, according to MGN, who is disputing the charges, denied knowing anything about hacking and had any misconduct kept from them.
