Just pointing out that there’s quite a lot of conflating and assumptions going on in this thread. Some points to clarify this.
The only news papers to date that have been proved in court to have used phone hacking were the Sun and the News of the World, both Murdoch-owned News International titles.
Various people at both publications were investigated for this, and some criminally prosecuted. Rebekah Brooks, famously, was acquitted (her defence laughably amounted to “I was actually a completely incompetent chief executive of that newspaper and so I didn’t have the foggiest idea what any of my reporters were up to” - 🙄). Former NOTW editor Andy Coulson (who was having an affair with Rebekah while all this was going on…) and reporter Clive Goodman were however convicted, along with a private investigator they used.
The lawsuits that posters above are referring to as being settled by hacking victims were all against News International publications, and have nothing to do with this case against ANL, the publisher of the Mail.
The number of times Harry/Kate/William’s phones were hacked also relate to the News International cases, and are not allegations against the Mail
This case is a new claim brought by Prince Harry and various other claimants against the Mail on the basis that they claim to have recently learned that it also used illegal means to obtain information for stories, including phone hacking. They are seeking compensation for breaches of their privacy, if the illegal tactics are proved (proving they happened will be what the case is all about, if they can get it off the ground).
Hacked Off, the activist group that campaigns for an accountable press, is also pushing for a public investigation into the Mail’s past practices.
There are two potential problems with this current case. Firstly, the fact that the abuses it alleges all took place a long time ago, starting in the early 2000s. Legally you normally only have six years within which to bring a court claim. If you start it after that six years are up, you are “out of time” and the claim will be struck out. That’s one of the main planks of the Mail’s defence, and what will be considered in these preliminary hearings.
Secondly, if you bring a claim out of time you can sometimes argue that the six years’ limit only started running once you found out about the unlawful activity, rather than when it actually happened. The problem here is that the Information Commissioner’s Office conducted its own investigation into journalism practices in 2003 and raided the office of a private investigator who worked for the Mail, amongst others, and revealed all the illegal tactics that he used for his clients. So it might be difficult to argue that no-one knew about this until recently.
This is all said without seeing any of the claimants’ evidence however - they may well be able to get around the timing problem. Good luck to them, too! (My own personal view is that Leveson 2 should have gone ahead and the press subjected to independent regulation to clean up their horrific practices).
Back to Hacked Off for a moment though. If the court case is deemed to be out of time, Harry would be best placed throwing his weight behind them, as an independent enquiry isn’t constrained by time limits and look can look back as far as it wants. It can’t award compensation to victims, however.