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

We don't know yet if he will settle out of court.

Presumably we find out tomorrow? Or will that depend on the outcome of the appeal against refusal to grant further delay?

He might be slaying that dragon yet.

If a deal was really on the cards, with him in another time zone, I'd guess the offer would have had to have been made yesterday. So was the first time-sensitive move from Lord Watson this morning, when it would have been the wee small hours in California. And the delays required until H could be reached, with the hope but not certainty that there would be movement from him too?

Oh, there’s already a couple of narratives circulating. Including that the Royal family is pressuring Murdoch to settle no matter the cost to avoid Harry revealing the awful truth about how corrupt they are in court…

Or Harry’s settling to protect his family. Not sure how that works….

I am struggling to see how time difference is an issue.

I found citing time delays extremely rude by Harry's team. To bring a court case and then asking for a delay because he didnt travel and then couldn't be arsed to be up and available on zoom. What better way to say to a judge that my time is more valuable than yours.

Makes no sense. He can't afford this. 10 million apparently even if he wins. He doesn't have that type of money.

So he's drawn the matter out for months/years and it looks as if he's going to settle, just like everyone else. It appears he's just been holding out for more money.

It'll be interesting to see whether, if he does settle, he'll give the money to charity.

The time difference does make a difference. Harry needs his sleep .

The barristers are also saying both sides will go to appeal if they lose. That’s another huge faff and expense. It’s likely this trial will cost Harry £10m. It’s clearly not worth it. He’s better off taking money from them. Then he can keep his lifestyle going a bit longer. Hopefully not back here at our expense.

David Folkenflik an NPR journalist and author of a book about Murdoch’s empire has tweeted that there are reports that Murdoch’s NGN has made a ‘massive’ settlement offer to Harry.

If so, it’s also a massive risk for Harry to proceed.

Harry’s win against the Mirror last year which received much less coverage than it should have gotten (no guesses as to why) might encourage him to press on, but the stakes sound too high to me now.

Dominion received US$787.5 million dollars when it settled with Murdoch’s US news arm.

In Forbes magazine in red lettering ‘Critical Quote’.
“Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my Company, our employees, and our customers,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said Tuesday. “Nothing can ever make up for that.”

Murdoch’s Fox said, “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

Perhaps Harry is looking for a similar admission from NGN - something that publicly vindicates him besides that of a ‘massive’ settlement.

Anyway, we should know tomorrow if the trial proceeds or not.

If I was Harry I’d take the massive settlement offer and set about changing his and his young family’s life so that neither he or Meghan have to worry about finances ever again.

I haven’t seen anything recently about Starmatic’s case against Murdoch’s Fox News. I wonder what is happening there?

That was my thought.. he’s taken it to the wire to get the biggest settlement he can. Disgusting.

If he does settle, I wonder what interesting pretzels will be pulled to justify him taking the money and presumably keeping it, when William was (and still is) vilified for settling but not keeping the money 🤔

🥨 William got his in a secret settlement, and where's your proof he gave it to charity???????
🥨 Harry has gone to court to get his, and he deserves all this money for the terrible toxic behaviour of his family/media/salty islanders/you.

That so far seems to be the script I've seen on my very brief glances.

He definitely won't. He'll either justify it with the usual "this is for my family, who I need to support because I've been so horribly cut off by my dad" or he'll make some grandiose statement about pledging something to charity, which will turn out to be some paltry token amount.

Of course, he may opt for the best of both worlds and put the whole thing through Archewell - claims it as a charitable donation but can keep 95% of it for himself anyway.

@TizerorFizz I assume your comment about Harry needing his sleep was sarcastic?

I can easily understand why people don't want to work with him. Not only do his projects flop, but if he can't be arsed to get out of a bed for a court case with millions at stake, which supposedly is his great passion in life, then what he can he be arsed to get out of bed for?

He really expects the English courts to accommodate his schedule 8 time zones away. Talk about entitled.

I can not get over the entitlement of expecting a court case to run on Californian time. He really is insufferable.

What happens if Harry doesn't want to continue but Tom does?

Can you imagine if others adopted Harry's work ethic?

Good morning and welcome to Breakfast News, bringing you the latest from the US. We'll be going over to our Washington correspondent just as soon as they've finished sleeping, woken up, got dressed and had a nice breakfast, so around, erm, 2pm here in London.

Dominion received US$787.5 million dollars when it settled with Murdoch’s US news arm.

Yes, but this is not America. Payouts in Britain are much smaller. It will still be a lot of money, but nowhere near that sort of sum.

If I was Harry I’d take the massive settlement offer and set about changing his and his young family’s life so that neither he or Meghan have to worry about finances ever again.

So why didn't he take that option from the start? Instead of wasting court time and idiotically posing as a 'dragon slayer'? Not to mention implying that his brother was a cowardly sell out for taking a 'secret settlement'?

@IcedPurple agreed, it's so rude.

He could be here in person, he should be really considering it's such an important case for him and he's the one who's bought it.

But if he doesn't want to, he can damn well get up and out of bed to be available for communications with his team. It's not like he has any other obligations later in the day - he can always take a bloody nap if he's tired.

Yes, he can easily afford the travel, has no real job and also has no problem with leaving his children. He could have flown out over the weekend and had a day or two to get over the jet lag if he'd wanted.

At the very least get your arse out of bed in time for the proceedings.

I do think he was available, this was an attempt to gain more time that the judge saw right through and why the talk of this being NGN who are desperate isn't the whole story as the claimants were also very keen to delay. As for a huge settlement, for Harry it would need to be just to break even. it maybe Harry has finally listened to legal advice, settle or risk losing everything. The trail would still go ahead but maybe delayed if Harry's case was due first and Tom didn't settle

Another day day, another dollar ( wonder if it’s sterling or dollars Harry wants his dragon slaying cash paid in)

Let’s see how day 2 developed!

I'm beginning to wonder if this whole last minute settlement plan has been brewing for some time. When friends starting leaking to People that Meghan wanted him to stop with the lawsuits, I think this was the start of crafting the capitulation story. The fact that Harry the Dragonslayer didn't appear yesterday suggests he's not up for fighting this. Again, I have no issue with him settling, he just looks ridiculous for not doing it sooner and hypocritical for the way he bitched about his brother doing the same (even though William's action in part helped bring about Levinson which made more of a difference to press practices than Harry's puffery ever will).

Just to reiterate, this is costing the taxpayers money and I don't think it's a good use of it.

He's an entitled arse keeping a part of the British justice system locked up with his games. He's got form for this as previously mentioned, 2023, judge told him to be there day one and he was at his child's birthday party - pathetic behaviour - imagine if a normal member of the British public did this! My brother is a doctor and used to have a very small light sports car, he managed to tap the back of a large car getting out of a tight spot in the roadside. Literally did no damage whatsoever. The other driver took him to court for whiplash and tried to sue my brother. He gave the person a huge dressing down for not only wasting court time but for NHS time wasted too as a days worth of operations had to be cancelled

"to protect his family" - could that meant because they would be wiped out financially if he doesn't settle?

Well, he did give the profits from Spare to charity. (Didn't he?)

Also the line that he must "do whatever is best for his family".
And him being the target of a relentless mogul empire.