Prince Harry Avoids the Media After Bumping into Photographer at Court 

Prince Harry arrived at London's Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday using the side door. He appeared to avoid a waiting press pack after he was bumped by a photographer in a media scrum on Monday.

The royal is in London to attend the second day of hearings connected with his lawsuit over illegal information gathering techniques. These were allegedly used by Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday U.K. newspapers.

Harry arrived at the court house on Tuesday morning wearing a dark suit and grey tie. He made his surprise first appearance on Monday, having traveled to Britain from his home with Meghan Markle in California under apparent secrecy.

When he arrived at the court's main entrance on Monday, Harry was met by a group of media members and photographers covering his lawsuit. This resulted in the royal bumping into one photographer as he tried to make his way to the door.

On Tuesday, Harry used the private side entrance that keeps the media at a distance. Video footage of his arrival shows that the prince offered journalists a brief wave before heading into the court house.

Harry brought the ongoing privacy lawsuit against Mail publishers in October 2022 with a collective of high-profile British co-claimants. These include Sir Elton John, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and the actress Elizabeth Hurley.

Harry and the wider group have made a number of allegations against ANL. The co-claimants say the publisher has based stories on illegal information-gathering techniques such as phone-hacking, wiretapping, blagging and bugging.

In October, the publisher's legal team said that the claims were "preposterous smears which appear to be nothing more than a pre-planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the Mail titles into the phone-hacking scandal concerning articles up to 30 years old."

The ANL team added: "These unsubstantiated and highly defamatory claims - based on no credible evidence - appear to be simply a fishing expedition by claimants and their lawyers, some of whom have already pursued cases elsewhere."

In court filings seen by Newsweek on Monday, Harry says the techniques used by ANL titles to obtain information on him left him suspicious and paranoid of those around him. The prince believed at the time that people in his inner circle were selling stories about his private life.

The filing read: "'While the Duke of Sussex states in evidence that he 'was probably aware of only a small percentage of the articles Associated wrote about me at the time,' his pleaded case is that 'suspicion and paranoia was caused by Associated's publication of the Unlawful Articles: friends were lost or cut off as a result and everyone became a 'suspect,' since he was misled by the way that the Articles were written into believing that those close to him were the source of this information being provided to Associated's newspapers.'"

Among those that the prince's legal team says were illegally hacked or pursued were his then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy; his close friend (and that of Prince William) Guy Pelly; and also Carole Middleton, the mother of Kate Middleton, William's wife, who then was his girlfriend.

Harry's appearance at the courts on Monday began a privacy debate over the merits of the prince seemingly using his public profile to raise the media focus on the hearing. The lawsuit itself is being brought over an invasion of privacy.

The hearings are scheduled to close on Thursday, with a deferred judgement expected to be delivered at a later date.

Newsweek emailed representatives of Prince Harry for comment.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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