Prince Harry Needs Courtroom Win to Offset 'Smell of Failure'—Podcast

Prince Harry needs to secure a courtroom win to offset any "smell of failure" after a judge dismissed part of one of the royal's ongoing lawsuits against the British tabloids over allegations of phone-hacking, a new episode of Newsweek's The Royal Report podcast has heard.

Harry is suing a number of the major tabloid publishers in Britain over allegations of historic unlawful-information-gathering activity employed to inform stories about his private life from the 1990s to 2010s.

In July, the prince received his first major blow in these proceedings when a judge ruled that he could not take the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Group Newspapers to trial. This was over allegations his voicemail messages were hacked by journalists at NGN's The Sun and News of the World titles. The judge said that Harry filed his claims too late.

On July 27, NGN was granted a partial summary judgment, dismissing Harry's phone-hacking claims as having expired. There is a six-year period in which such claims can be brought in Britain.

The six-year period starts from the time a claimant is made aware they may have been the victim of such activity. Harry filed his claim in 2019, with the judge being sufficiently convinced by NGN's lawyers that the prince was aware he could have made a claim prior to 2013, thus exceeding the six-year cut-off.

This is a blow for Harry, who would no doubt have seen it as a personal victory if he could have proven in court that journalists at The Sun had hacked phones. NGN has repeatedly issued statements that their employees did not.

The lawsuit is not over, though. The judge ruled that, though Harry couldn't take his phone-hacking allegations against NGN to trial, he could pursue his claims of other unlawful information-gathering. These include "blagging", by phoning up companies and pretending to be account holders, and the hiring of private investigators to conduct illegal activity.

This leaves the prince at an important point in his post-royal life, Newsweek chief royal correspondent, Jack Royston, told listeners of The Royal Report. Harry needs to secure a win to avoid being seen as a failure.

"It would have been a major victory for him if he could get that ruling," Royston said of Harry's NGN phone-hacking claim.

"There's also the issue of the kind of general smell of failure. Like, you don't want to smell of failure. You want to smell of success, and so this is another kind of dent in the armor.

"It's another knock for Harry on the back of a whole load of others," Royston added, "from the collapse of [Harry and Meghan's] Spotify deal to the kind of big cultural backlash against Harry's memoir. So, you know, a victory on the remaining bit of the case would really help to offset that."

Both Harry and wife Meghan have experienced a year of hard knocks in the public eye since the release of their Netflix docuseries last December and Harry's memoir, Spare, in January.

The couple saw their popularity on either side of the Atlantic plummet because of criticism over their revelations. Although, in recent months, the tide has seen a slow but positive change in their favor, Harry and Meghan have also experienced further public embarrassments.

In June, it was announced that the couple had split from streaming partner Spotify after producing just one 12-episode podcast series, Archetypes. Though the arrangement was said to have been made mutually, in the days afterwards an executive at the company made headlines after calling the royals "f****** grifters" on a podcast appearance.

This closely followed an incident in New York in May, where the couple were chased by photographers during a visit to attend an awards show at which Meghan was being honored.

A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan called the incident a "near-catastrophic" car chase that lasted almost two hours. However, over the following days, high-profile figures such as the mayor of New York and representatives of the NYPD appeared to present a more subdued account of what had happened. This brought criticism on the couple for appearing to overdramatize the event.

A win in court for Harry would not only count as a personal victory but would also boost his public image. In addition to his unlawful-information-gathering lawsuits against tabloid publishers, the prince also has one pending against Associated Newspapers Limited for defamation relating to a 2022 article. There is also a lawsuit incoming against the U.K. government regarding the decision to remove Harry's state-funded bodyguards when he stepped down as a working royal.

The proportion of Harry's NGN lawsuit that a judge has ruled can proceed to trial is expected to be heard in 2024.

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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