Page 19 | Harry v. NGN

Atlasvue · 2025-01-19T10:02:32+00:00

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

Weepixie · 22/01/2025 13:39

He settled. There is no win here by any stretch of the imagination

I suspect the majority of people will know full well NGN were doing what Harry accused them of and that in the court of public opinion he’ll be seen to have won. I’m not a fan of his, but I think he’s done very well to achieve what he’s achieved today and it was by no means a fail on his part.

I found the ref to his mum in the statement very touching.

smilesy · 22/01/2025 13:41

I hope it brings him closure.

I’m not holding my breath unfortunately

Lostinidea · 22/01/2025 13:44

@MrsLeonFarrell "I hope it brings him closure".

I very much doubt there is any sum of money in the world that could achieve that unfortunately.

Original poster

Atlasvue · 22/01/2025 13:44

He’s still for the security case and the DM next year. So he’s still obsessed.

OP posts:

Dolma · 22/01/2025 13:45

samarrange · 22/01/2025 13:25

I suspect that the attached paragraph from NGN's statement may be relevant to explaining why they folded. For all its carefully-worded bluster about what might have been presented in court, it does not actually say "News International did not destroy evidence". I suspect they know that the other side had pretty strong indications that they did in fact destroy evidence. And although this was a civil trail, putting that into the legal domain could have resulted in criminal prosecutions as a result, including possibly for perjury.

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It says "these allegations were and are continue to be strongly denied", I don't see that that is any different to saying that they did not destroy evidence?

Harry hasn't managed to produce a smoking gun about the inner workings of any media organisations to date, so it doesn't seem very plausible that he has one here (one that has bypassed everyone else who has scrutinised the tabloid press in the last twenty years, no less). And NGN wouldn't hand that over willingly, perhaps Harry has had to use the odd private investigator himself 😂

Lostinidea · 22/01/2025 13:46

Atlasvue · 22/01/2025 13:44

He’s still for the security case and the DM next year. So he’s still obsessed.

Seriously how can he afford to keep chasing them all. Unless there are more eleventh hour settlements to look forward to.

MrsLeonFarrell · 22/01/2025 13:47

Weepixie · 22/01/2025 13:39

He settled. There is no win here by any stretch of the imagination

I suspect the majority of people will know full well NGN were doing what Harry accused them of and that in the court of public opinion he’ll be seen to have won. I’m not a fan of his, but I think he’s done very well to achieve what he’s achieved today and it was by no means a fail on his part.

I found the ref to his mum in the statement very touching.

Edited

We know that they were paying people who acted illegally. Harry was trying to prove that executives who worked for NGN knew about the illegal actions and maybe ordered them.

He has settled so that hasn't been proved. Interesting that his lawyer was calling for the executives to be prosecuted anyway.

IcedPurple · 22/01/2025 13:51

Weepixie · 22/01/2025 13:39

He settled. There is no win here by any stretch of the imagination

I suspect the majority of people will know full well NGN were doing what Harry accused them of and that in the court of public opinion he’ll be seen to have won. I’m not a fan of his, but I think he’s done very well to achieve what he’s achieved today and it was by no means a fail on his part.

I found the ref to his mum in the statement very touching.

Edited

In fairness, anyone who doesn't know that must have been living under a rock for the past 15 years. This is hardly the first case against The Sun or similar papers.

Harry specifically wanted it to be shown in court that staff at the highest level were implicated in all this. That's why we were told this case was different from all the others. Turns out it wasn't so different, and neither was Harry very different from all the others who accepted a financial settlement. Except that they didn't pose as 'dragon slayers'.

smilesy · 22/01/2025 13:51

MrsLeonFarrell · 22/01/2025 13:47

We know that they were paying people who acted illegally. Harry was trying to prove that executives who worked for NGN knew about the illegal actions and maybe ordered them.

He has settled so that hasn't been proved. Interesting that his lawyer was calling for the executives to be prosecuted anyway.

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Sherborne probably only spouting what he knows Harry wants to hear. Haven’t there been many calls over the years for Murdoch to be prosecuted for various reasons. If there is new evidence passed to the police then hopefully it will be acted upon. But I would be surprised if there was anything new. If there was, why have they held on to it until they got their settlement? That would be Harry’s route to dragon slaying, surely 🤷‍♀️

Cublaca · 22/01/2025 13:51

Atlasvue · 22/01/2025 13:36

Exactly! The sun aren’t apologising for anything.

Blaming the private investigators. Harry accepts that it was the PIs and not journalists and those high up at the Sun and it’s owners

So why are these posters acting like it was what Harry was setting out to accomplish?

All he got was his fees and a non apology

Maybe the VF article played a part. They desperately need to change the narrative. Achieving a monumental victory (LOL) against the evil media sounds better than Meghan is a bully and Harry a tool of the last few days.

Hants123 · 22/01/2025 13:52

The BBC say they are reliably informed that it was an eight figure settlement.

Americano75 · 22/01/2025 13:52

smilesy · 22/01/2025 13:30

He got the same apology everyone else got years ago. what needs to be”twisting”? He didn’t get the admission he claimed he wanted. You don’t need to be a “brainless fanny” or any other charming insult you care to throw around to work that one out

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Plenty more where that came from.

Personally I'm more offended by how the tabloids are allowed to wreck lives as they see fit, and how willing people are to lap up their bullshit.

Hazeby · 22/01/2025 13:53

At the end of the day, it’s up to him. HE was the one whose privacy was invaded, HE was the one who suffered the consequences of that so it’s entirely up to him what resolution he accepts. Why don’t we all try judging when we’ve walked a mile in his shoes, eh?

Weepixie · 22/01/2025 13:54

Harry was trying to prove that executives who worked for NGN knew about the illegal actions and maybe ordered them

I believe they did. Others will also believe they did. The organisation was corrupt from the top down and whilst they may not have known in great detail about the goings on, they knew it was happening.

Spectre8 · 22/01/2025 13:56

Atlasvue · 22/01/2025 13:44

He’s still for the security case and the DM next year. So he’s still obsessed.

Obsessed about suing each news agency involved with hacking his phone and obtaining information illegally? There are other claimants also for the DM case That isn't being obsessed. If the press hacked you would you sit there and take it or fight each and every one of them or be like oh well one has apologised that's enough now. Aren't you disgusted that our press have been hacking people's phones and other things illegally?

Partybagprick · 22/01/2025 13:57

Weepixie · 22/01/2025 13:54

Harry was trying to prove that executives who worked for NGN knew about the illegal actions and maybe ordered them

I believe they did. Others will also believe they did. The organisation was corrupt from the top down and whilst they may not have known in great detail about the goings on, they knew it was happening.

And pretty much the entire population who paid attention to Levesen have thought that since 2011. And yet, nothing has been proven and these people still have their very cushy, high profile jobs. And nothing Harry and his cohort have achieved has done a single thing to change that.

MummyJ12 · 22/01/2025 13:57

TallerSally · 22/01/2025 13:08

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.

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ITV has just reported that the figure is between 10-20 million.

cheezncrackers · 22/01/2025 13:58

It won't bring him closure, because by settling, admitting that they paid private investigators to snoop on him, and paying him a huge sum in damages NGN has admitted that they DID do exactly what he accused them of. This is absolutely a win for him.

I'm no fan of Harry's, but it doesn't surprise me at all that NGN invaded his privacy. They've been shown on numerous occasions to have spied on celebs, hacked their phones, and even set out to deliberately break celeb couples up. There was a documentary on before Christmas about boy bands and there was a tabloid journalist on that who said that he and his paper (I don't remember which one), made it their mission to destroy Brian Harvey's relationship and Danniella Westbrook. And indeed they succeeded. It doesn't matter what you think of the celebs in question, it was disgusting behaviour and seemingly quite common at the time.

Original poster

Atlasvue · 22/01/2025 13:59

Spectre8 · 22/01/2025 13:56

Obsessed about suing each news agency involved with hacking his phone and obtaining information illegally? There are other claimants also for the DM case That isn't being obsessed. If the press hacked you would you sit there and take it or fight each and every one of them or be like oh well one has apologised that's enough now. Aren't you disgusted that our press have been hacking people's phones and other things illegally?

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Who’s the other claimants for the DM? They’ve all settled. It’s only Harry and Doreen Lawrence.

As I say, obsessed.

He’s going to leave it to the last min again to fold and take the money for the legal fees.

OP posts:

Spectre8 · 22/01/2025 13:59

Cublaca · 22/01/2025 13:51

Maybe the VF article played a part. They desperately need to change the narrative. Achieving a monumental victory (LOL) against the evil media sounds better than Meghan is a bully and Harry a tool of the last few days.

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Well certain media have been evil don't you agree? Illegally hacking phones of just not Harry, Watson, High Grant but also Cayherine, William and many more.

RoyalCorgi · 22/01/2025 14:00

Hazeby · 22/01/2025 13:53

At the end of the day, it’s up to him. HE was the one whose privacy was invaded, HE was the one who suffered the consequences of that so it’s entirely up to him what resolution he accepts. Why don’t we all try judging when we’ve walked a mile in his shoes, eh?

Edited

Absolutely. Apart from which, this has benefited all the people who couldn't afford to make a claim against NGN. Now that the company has admitted to illegal activity, they can at least feel vindicated and they may even have the opportunity to make their own claims without an expensive legal battle.

Alarmclockstop · 22/01/2025 14:00

It's notable, that when any of these threads becomes busy/gets in trending, there are posts from people who have very odd typos.

Cublaca · 22/01/2025 14:03

Spectre8 · 22/01/2025 13:59

Well certain media have been evil don't you agree? Illegally hacking phones of just not Harry, Watson, High Grant but also Cayherine, William and many more.

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Illegal hacking is despicable.

But bullying is too, as reported by respected media such as The Times, Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair.

MummyJ12 · 22/01/2025 14:04

I say good for Harry. I do think it was the right decision.

Hopefully, he’ll stop invading his family’s privacy now as it’s such an important issue for him. (sorry, couldn’t help it!)

Partybagprick · 22/01/2025 14:04

cheezncrackers · 22/01/2025 13:58

It won't bring him closure, because by settling, admitting that they paid private investigators to snoop on him, and paying him a huge sum in damages NGN has admitted that they DID do exactly what he accused them of. This is absolutely a win for him.

I'm no fan of Harry's, but it doesn't surprise me at all that NGN invaded his privacy. They've been shown on numerous occasions to have spied on celebs, hacked their phones, and even set out to deliberately break celeb couples up. There was a documentary on before Christmas about boy bands and there was a tabloid journalist on that who said that he and his paper (I don't remember which one), made it their mission to destroy Brian Harvey's relationship and Danniella Westbrook. And indeed they succeeded. It doesn't matter what you think of the celebs in question, it was disgusting behaviour and seemingly quite common at the time.

It doesn't surprise anyone. Nobody thinks he doesn't deserve compensation for being hacked. What they object to is his borderline abuse of the court process and his self aggrandised "dragon slaying" and setting himself apart from other litigants by saying he won't settle and will go to trial for the "truth" and executive accountability. When he is just the same as all of them, and settled.