Harry v. NGN

[Atlasvue]

Starting a thread for Tuesday.
This BBC article covers the basics. This is the last line ….
’Tuesday really is the beginning of the end. And someone is going to lose - and lose big.’

I have a feeling, that Harry won’t win but he just wants to use the public setting to air his grievances. A therapy session would have worked out much cheaper.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2l00xkgwnyo

I think people may be thinking "what a twat" because of the gap between the dragon-slaying rhetoric and the taking of an offer.

It has been a phenomenal waste of court time for something which could, and I think should, have been done months ago.

Depending on the terms of the offer, litigants are required to accept.

Congrats Harry - a huge win.

The sort of apology that was probably available all along - unlawful activity only by private investigators (already known after various convictions and Leveson) - no admission that anyone senior at the Sun knew about them.

Apology for intrusion and distress, standard phrasing.

Well, David Sherborne certainly hasn't been gagged in what NGN are allowing him to say publicly. So the apology has to be read in the light of that and the fact that the evidence is going forward to the Met.

How can a litigant be 'required' to accept?

It can be hugely risky not to accept, financially, but Harry's point for months is that he can afford the risk so is doing this for everyone who can't afford it.

But I don't see how he can be 'required' to accept? How? Who?

Ask a costs lawyer what the consequences are for not accepting an extremely generous offer.

Yes, the case never went to trial so who exactly would be 'requiring' Harry to accept?

Well, the Met is the appropriate agency if there is evidence that people have broken the law. Not the civil courts. I am not sure whether Harry and his legal team have new evidence that they have withheld from the police?

Otherwise it is evidence that has already been reviewed and NFAd

The system is designed to penalise those who refuse to accept obviously appropriate offers to settle. Harry has won big here.

It’s interesting to consider it certainly! The statement in full:

NGN offers a full and unequivocal apology to the Duke of Sussex for the serious intrusion by The Sun between 1996 and 2011 into his private life, including incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for The Sun.
NGN also offers a NGN offers a full and unequivocal apology to the Duke of Sussex for the serious intrusion by The Sun between 1996 and 2011 into his private life, including incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for The Sun.
NGN also offers a full and unequivocal apology to the Duke of Sussex for the phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information by journalists and private investigators instructed by them at the News of the World.
NGN further apologises to the Duke for the impact on him of the extensive coverage and serious intrusion into his private life as well as the private life of Diana, Princess of Wales, his late mother, in particular during his younger years.
We acknowledge and apologise for the distress caused to the Duke, and the damage inflicted on relationships, friendships and family, and have agreed to pay him substantial damages. It is also acknowledged, without any admission of illegality, that NGN's response to the 2006 arrests and subsequent actions were regrettable.
NGN also offers a full and unequivocal apology to Lord Watson for the unwarranted intrusion carried out into his private life during his time in Government by the News of the World during the period 2009- 2011.
This includes him being placed under surveillance in 2009 by journalists at the News of the World and those instructed by them. NGN also acknowledges and apologises for the adverse impact this had on Lord Watson's family and has agreed to pay him substantial damages.
In addition, in 2011 News International received information that information was being passed covertly to Lord Watson from within News International. We now understand that this information was false, and Lord Watson was not in receipt of any such confidential information. NGN apologises fully and unequivocally for this.

Points I took away from this - both Tom Watson and Harry have been given a “full and unequivocal apology”. That’s very normal. But the devil is in the detail here.

Harry’s apology is for The Sun working with private investigators who undertook unlawful activities to gain personal information about him, and then for journalists and private investigators at the News of The World hacking his phone etc.

Harry wanted to establish that The Sun itself ( i.e. its journalists) were conducting unlawful activities and hacking his phones. He hasn’t got that admission however - it was the private investigators who are admitted to have done that, and journalists at the News of the World That is old news, revealed in the prosecutions that followed William’s initial police compliant and covered at length in the Leveson enquiry. So that respect he didn’t get what he wanted - an admission that the Sun itself was hacking phones.

It’s also instructive that the apology to Tom Watson is notably shorter than that to Harry. And that Harry’s includes an apology to Princess Diana, who was obviously not a claimant in this case. That is clearly all for the benefit of Harry’s ego and spinning this settlement for the wider audience (“I was fighting this crusade not just on my behalf, but for my sainted mother also…”).

Happy to be told I am wrong but did Harry not also want to prove that BP were in cahoots with the media ? That they gave information to them about Harry in exchange for good publicity for other members of the RF ?
Or is that a different case ?
Or did I imagine it ?

Honestly, whoever is advising Harry needs to be sacked... is it the same person who advised Prince Andrew?

But that's what everyone has been saying for months! And Harry has been grandstanding about not accepting (and being able to afford not to accept) because he wants 'accountability' not money!

Maybe someone with legal knowledge can answer this - will the settlement be more than Harry’s legal costs ?

Yes way, way more. The settlement will be enormous.

But we knew that all along.

Even allowing for the fact that Harry isn't the brightest, he must have known it too.

Yet he claimed that this was about 'accountability' not money. That clearly wasn't true, was it?

He got an apology for press intrusion that is not phone hacking. NGN couldn't care less about that. Journalists being exposed for using private investigators is not exactly the scoop of the century. NGN have successfully kept The Sun's name "clean" - there won't be any further phone hacking cases due to limitations, and the allegations of a cover up (which might have brought unwelcome attention to The Sun and phone hacking) have no gone away. Sherborne's talk of a "historic admission of guilt" is just nonsense.

Harry's sudden agreement to a settlement is mighty strange though. I'm not sure it can be explained by a new Part 36 offer yesterday. NGN's strategy for settling has been honed over many, many cases, they are literally the leading experts in forcing a settlement for these cases and would have given a winning Part 36 offer months (years!) ago, so we can assume that they already had costs protection from that. And Harry and his team will have known that all along that they would most likely be paying NGN's costs regardless of the result at trial, so that won't have provoked a sudden push for settlement now.

Can NGN really have offered him so much money as a new settlement that he would go through the public ridicule of backing down on this fight? It would have had to be enough to pay his legal fees and still give a head-turning amount left over - given that NGN had successfully gotten rid of the phone hacking claims, and the executives were apparently going to refuse to give evidence on the cover-up allegations, it just seems unlikely that they would pay tens of millions in settlement to avoid being found to have used private investigators (especially as they've admitted to that in the apology anyway!). Although the fact that Sherborne said that the delay was due to not being able to get instructions does indicate that NGN proposed a materially different settlement, and they needed to get in touch with Harry (not likely that Harry will have proposed something new himself whilst asleep in California!).

Everyone knows what the costs consequences are, it's been discussed on this thread and on the previous threads ad nauseam. That's precisely what Harry said he wouldn't do though, accept a settlement in order avoid the costs consequences of not doing so. He claimed he didn't have to do this because of his wealthy circumstances, and was pursuing the case through a trial so that the evidence could be heard publicly and the right people held accountable, and that he was doing this for everyone who had settled out of fear of the costs liabilities. That has not happened. He's settled out of fear of the costs consequences and he is no hero, no dragon slayer. He's just s regular litigant like the millions of others every year who settle out of court.

That again is old news. Rebekah Brooks gave the most ludicrous evidence ever to get herself out of her own criminal trial which was more than 10 years ago now. Her whole defence was “I was such an incompetent editor, honestly, I didn’t have the foggiest idea what anyone on my paper was doing. Not a scooby. So I definitely didn’t know they were phone hacking!!”.

Astonishingly, she was acquitted.

We all know that the newspapers hacked into people's phones, and knew they were doing it,

By paying off the people who started legal proceedings they are able to deny knowing they were doing it.

Newspapers can afford to buy silence.

We will never know. But it would have to be a very large settlement to cover Harry’s legal costs.

And given NGN have not given Harry what he wanted (an admission that The Sun itself conducted phone hacking) this was clearly not a roll-over settlement - it was a negotiated settlement with The Sun knowing it had a good chance of winning at court. So it is therefore unlikely they will have paid over the odds.

100% this doesn't change anything for me. I still look to those papers having done illegal things. Harry and Watson both wanted to pursue it more fair play. I'd champion anyone doing what they feel they want to do against such illegal activities. I don't care who was doing it. I couldn't care less about my taxes going towards paying it. Our taxes get wasted on so many other pointless things but this one is not one I personally will moan about. Good for them both. Absolutely disgusting what took place and can only hope it never happens to anyone again.

IMO the Sun knew they had a good chance of getting their victim to take the money and give up. Like all the others.

Which is not the same as winning in court.

I can’t see why you’d think that. Would be helpful to understand your thinking here?

So once again Harry's tried to position himself as a principled crusader, only for it all to fall apart yet again

You really have to wonder what's left for him, with almost total recognition that he's a complete fool and the sharks circling, and in the circumstances maybe he felt that staying with the family instead of facing court was the only real option?