The trials and tribulations of Harry - thread 2

[TrashyPanda]

Continuation of

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/4812092-ph-lost-bid-to-challenge-for-right-to-pay-home-office-for-his-security?page=10&reply=126688485

Defend Harry with points you can back up - just trashing other posters is not good enough

So tedious

Well, I think direct evidence is tricky. He was never going to be able to say ‘Journalist X listened to this voicemail at this time on this day’.

It’s more that he has to build an overall picture, show a pattern of suspicious behaviour, payments to investigators that coincided with articles, that sort of thing, and combine it with known previous behaviour of the paper in question. Then the judge makes a decision on balance as to whether it was more likely than not that they did what he claims.

Harry keeps backing out of everything, I assume he doesn’t wish to lie on the stand, he’s even saying he can’t remember if he left a voice message on Burrell. It’s literally all falling apart.

im sure his KC will be giving it do you think you did. But I think thr damage is done. However they need to get through every article. And they just need to find one.

Hey folks - a friendly reminder to keep the thread on track, discussing the court case.

any personal attacks etc should be reported to MN to deal with.

Mr Coad adds that Prince Harry may have "discomforted" the judge by instigating a dialogue with him

'Discomforted' a High Court judge? those well known shrinking violets? I'd say he has just as great a presence as a member of the RF considering it's his court and his rules; which PH has already flouted once.

Yes but that’s not happening is it, not even slightly.

@TrashyPanda Harry not turning up to give evidence at all - you'd probably be able to assume something from that (and his evidence would obviously carry very little weight) but not turning up on time won't be taken into account.

But surely that doesn't apply when there are alternative explanations, as alleged by Green?

Such as multiple people being privy to the information, or the story having already appeared in a different publication. What exactly is this 'evidence' that you expect the judge to be convinced by?

I've no doubt he was hacked and I've no doubt everyone in the newspaper world knows that, but the case?

You've no doubt he was hacked by this specific newspaper, on these specific occasions? Or speaking more generally?

@MadamWhiteleigh
Don't forget that William settled with NGN. Some of your examples could have been discovered on his phone.

Charles and Harry will both have lots of staff who could have overheard arguing on the phone or discussion about said argument. I know that there are NDAs but I wouldn't judge someone making extra by leaking that to the papers.

It might be easy to narrow down flight times if you know which airline the celebrity prefers and which airport they will fly from. For example a quick google revealed that there are on average 3 direct flights a day between Heathrow and Johannesburg. They are between 1820 and 2230 because departures are public record. Based on previous behaviour you might know that they avoid British Airways which leaves Virgin as the airline.

I thought Colleen Rooney and her WC had established they couldn’t have come from any other source as they were made up and only shown to one other account on SM

In Harry’s witness accounts the paper is highlighting other potential sources for the information (which Vardy’s team wasn’t able to do)

Vardy and her friend talked about selling stories. So far Harry hasn’t shown any evidence of people discussing hacking him etc

that

Waste of a KC's skillset. A junior barrister could have handled it with his eyes closed.

From my (limited) understanding they need to work out the balance of probabilities - so eg for the story about the phone slamming, Harry needs to prove that it is much more likely the source of the story was illegal hacking than it was to have been deliberately/inadvertently leaked by Prince Charles or his staff, which is a bit awkward since he also alleged that

I don’t understand the tactic of the witness statement, it is too many points and too long ago it would trip most people.

I wonder how he knows which stories were leaked by evil Camilla and which were obtained illegally by journalists.

@MadamWhiteleigh Circumstantial evidence still needs to be backed up by evidence. So far the claimant hasn't shown significant evidence of provable facts. If they can then of course it should be taken into account. If MGN are saying it's not enough, then they are right. Without solid evidence it isn't enough 🤷🏻‍♀️

The judge commented on the fact that Harry did not turn up at all yesterday - and that doesn’t happen without severe provocation.

flouting court instructions rarely goes down well. Wouldn’t the sensible thing would have been for him to turn up yesterday afternoon and apologise fulsomely?

Also a good point - if you allege deliberate leaking AND phone hacking it does muddy the waters

He is disillusioned with a family and the culture/country within which it operates. He has chosen the wrong outlet to continue to vent those frustrations and remind them of his feelings. This could cement his reputation as a foul-mouthed simpleton. Compared to the other litigants, he has barely been subject to anything provable. Not well played, i think.

I have only been dipping into these threads and haven't caught up yet but so far I have got - I was very distressed by stories that I don't remember reading which were already in the public domain but still must have been obtained by hacking my mobile which I didn't own yet.

His credibility is losing even more each time he is caught out and unlike on a publicity circuit, he can choose who is questioning him and ensure he isn’t asked probing questions, the KC here is not holding back.

I agree that Harry isn’t understanding what illegal means in a legal definition but considering he is taking the stand in the first place, it seems likely that he isn’t accepting advice from a legal team with his best interests at heart here.

And circumstantial evidence needs to be founded on some bed stone. Claiming a newspaper hacked info saying “X said this” but then admitting you can’t remember if you actually said it means there is a fair probability it may not have happened - that the story was made up.

and repeatedly saying you can’t remember does not add up welln the credibility stakes.

The circumstantial evidence is basically phones were being hacked around the time of the alleged offences and hacking was admitted. That's not strong circumstantial evidence. Has to be stronger than the fact illegal activities were taking place. If MGN can demonstrate there were alternative sources for the news stories then the fact hacking took place won't have huge significance.

Maybe take your mind off it by doing some therapeutic juggling?

with balls, not facts…

Well, I think direct evidence is tricky. He was never going to be able to say ‘Journalist X listened to this voicemail at this time on this day’.

Personally I would have thought he needs to be able to say, convincingly, that he recalls leaving or receiving voicemail messages on the matters relevant to the article, to at least raise the possibility that the voicemail messages were the source of the articles he complains of. But he’s not done that at all - he even backed away from the question when directly asked if he might have left a voicemail describing Paul Burrell in the same terms that was used in an article.

Rooney couldn’t show any direct contact between Vardy or her agent and the journalist, but things like the random loss of the agent’s phone into the sea, Vardy’s ‘broken’ laptop, the no-show of the agent in court was the sort of circumstantial evidence that, taken together with everything else, persuaded the judge that in the balance of probabilities, they had done what they were accused of.

Even with a lot of the WhatsApp messages from both Vardy and her agent “mysteriously” being unable to be disclosed, there was still plenty of direct (and damning) messages between them to show what was happening. Eg Vardy texting her agent with a titbit about a footballer and saying “I’ll want paying for this” and another time her agent saying in relation to Colleen asking who would share information that “It was me!”. And, as has pointed out, complete lack of another source for the stories in the Vardy. That’s not the case here, as the KC has been painstakingly pointing out.