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

Proving nothing of the kind.

If NGN offered a settlement that was as much as, or more than, would have been awarded in court and Harry failed to accept it, he would have been liable for NGN's costs even if he won. If NGN offered enough, Harry's choice would have been to continue and possibly end up bankrupt, or accept what was on the table. Given that the offer included a full apology to both him and his mother with an admission of wrongdoing, he got what he wanted and was in a position where he had little choice but to accept. The same happened with Hugh Grant, who said he did not want to accept NGN's offer but had no choice as going to trial would be too expensive.

Despite what the Harry-haters on this thread think, this is a huge victory for him. NGN has folded. They have avoided a judgement that there was a corporate cover-up going all the way to the top of the business, but they have, for the first time, admitted wrongdoing and apologised to Harry and Diana.

The settlement will cover Harry's costs which will have been substantial. We don't know how much it goes beyond that, if at all.

Jenni Bond who used to be a royal correspondent more or less said that on Sky news this morning. She said the likes of Piers Morgan was wined and dined at exclusive events she wasn't invited to. She sounded a bit miffed

Wrong quote sorry. She didn't say that.

I heard it’s not money, but Murdoch himself giving Harry a “money can’t buy” live performance of Candle in the Wind 1997.

And Harry used to go for drinks with journalists. I could go on with the Omid Scoobie relationship with H&M, and the smears to Charles, William, Catherine and Camilla, if you want.

Despite what the Harry-haters on this thread think, this is a huge victory for him.

Is the victory in the room with us?

NGN has folded.

No they haven't. Their preference has always been to settle. It was Harry that didn't want to settle.

Despite what the Harry-haters on this thread think, this is a huge victory for him. NGN has folded. They have avoided a judgement that there was a corporate cover-up going all the way to the top of the business,

But this has been NGN’s strategy from the get go - they deliberately chose to settle each and every one of these cases! They didn’t fold - they got exactly what they wanted. Just later, and more expensively than all the earlier cases.

V tasteless...thats his mothers funeral you are referring to.

The settlement will cover Harry's costs which will have been substantial. We don't know how much it goes beyond that, if at all.

I might be misreading but it sounded to me as though NGN would be covering Harry’s legal costs separately from the settlement. If so, it’s a substantial financial win for him.

He seems rather good at extracting millions from people who should know better. Perhaps this is his superpower.

It's a bit surreal, months if not years spent saying Harry should settle and the arguments being it's more than money it's principle to now have the argument flipped and what should be a large consensus of settling is right it now people are hateful to query why he's settled as it's the right thing to do.

I didn't think she sounded miffed, rather she sounded incredulous.

Well fair is fair, I guess, but my goodness he will be even more insufferable now!

You imagine?
Come back and tell me when you know.
Then we can talk.

Yes maybe.

But it isn't really substantial for their lifestyle, especially when it looks like there isn't much income coming in the future.

I agree.

I read with some amusement the speculation that Harry's settlement is in the £10M range.

Let's put ourselves in Murdoch's shoes for a bit, shall we?
Fox News will pay more than $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems...
Fox News now facing Smartmatic's $2.7 billion lawsuit over the network's 2020 post-election coverage....

Different country, very different legal system and different set of issues, but if £10M (plus costs) was all it'd take to get Harry to settle, don't you think Murdoch would have offered that ages ago? The way to think about how NGN approached their settlement offer is to consider the downside risks to them of exposure to further proceedings and government regulation as well as the risks to their individual executives including Rebekah Brooks, who is still exposed despite this settlement. The downside risks to them are HUGE. The amount they'd need to offer to mitigate these risks would need to be commensurate.

My guess re Harry's settlement is that it's in excess of £30M + costs + apology and admission of wrongdoing. It needed to be an eye-watering amount that would bankrupt Harry if he didn't take it, and I suspect Harry had already budgeted a £10M hit if he were to go to trial and win, as he was clearly highly likely to do.

£10M may be eyewatering to some, but it's chump change to the likes of NGN ....and incidentally to the senior members of the RF, who (Harry excluded) are billionaires. And it's not far-fetched to speculate that Jeff "$240bn net-worth" Bezos could have chipped in a few dozens of millions to protect Will Lewis at the Washington Post. And who knows, could the Royal Households have secretly chipped something in too, to conceal the role they played?

Of course it's in the interests of the British Media to attempt to downplay the amount NGN has had to fork out to settle with Harry, and to weave the silly narrative that Harry settled for a measly £10M. I wouldn't be surprised if the true amount is in the £50M ballpark.

So it's blindingly obvious that Harry had no choice but to settle, and he got most of what he wanted, first and foremost NGN's unprecedented public admission of wrong-doing at the Sun, as well as the groveling apology including to Princess Diana, neither of which was obtained by Prince William. And after all, it's not up to Harry to single-handedly hold most of the British Media to account, there is law enforcement and a government in the UK - and a Leveson II which never happened. I'm glad Sherborne and Tom Watson reminded people of that.

Anyway, what a huge victory for Harry. No-one ever walks away from legal proceedings with all their boxes ticked, but Harry and Tom Watson can be proud of themselves for pushing NGN this far, all the way to admitting criminality.

Yes, there won’t be a lot of repeat business either, you can only squeeze a lemon once.

I read the apology. That’s a ‘win’ for Harry. It’s what winning the court case would have achieved, but at less personal and time cost.

Someone’s got their talking points!

Yes, they have. They wanted to deny any wrongdoing. They have clearly got to the point where they have looked at the evidence and realised that there was a very real risk that the courts would decide there had been a corporate cover-up going all the way to the top of the organisation. They have therefore, finally, offered an apology to him and his mother admitting wrongdoing, which is what Harry was after, and made a settlement offer big enough to mean Harry could not refuse it without risking bankruptcy.

No, the court case aimed to prove illegal behaviour at the highest level of the organisation.

This apology only admits to such behaviour by freelance 'private investigators' which is an altogether different kettle of fish and does not directly implicate the newspaper itself.

I would say both sides can chalk it up to a 'win'. That's what most settlements are designed to achieve.

Yup. The official mouthpiece has arrived.

He seems rather good at extracting millions from people who should know better. Perhaps this is his superpower.

Yes, he does have a knack for it, unarguably good at it imo.

I also am hugely amused at the suggestion that Harry can’t be bothered to wake up to say yes to an offer of £50m. Nobody has difficulty getting instructions from their client if that’s the settlement ballpark. 🤣🤣

This seems to have reached its inevitable conclusion. Well inevitable to everyone except Harry, that is.

We're sorry some private investigators did some bad stuff ages ago (until 2011) isn't a great apology though. I appreciate that there is a formula for such things, but it doesn't sound sincere or genuine to me. There is no, we will do better / we have already changed, as I might have expected, either.