Duke of Sussex & Others v ANL: thread 2

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This is a continuation of the discussion on the previous thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/5443044-duke-of-sussex-court-case-key-witness-statement-false?page=1

We are following the court case on the

@jeffgoldblum well, quite! I'd also love to see the list of payments to Sherborne himself and the 'services' provided...

Me too @PrayForMyBum! He’s starting ( perhaps always was !) to look like what I believe the Americans call “ an ambulance chaser!” , he is the type of man that gives lawyers( or solicitors) a bad name .

I'm intrigued by Dacre's evidence - can any lawyers help work out the strategy?
He seems to be saying: "Yes, we used private investigators - gosh, quite a lot really - but none of us really knew what they were doing and they were so useful and, oops, turns out they might have been doing illegal things."

Does denying knowledge of illegal activity - when, arguably, they should have known - actually work as a defence? I suppose he's trying to suggest his journalists didn't actively commission illegal acts.
But if I pay someone who is, say, a convicted assassin and say that I'd like to get rid of my boyfriend, and the boyfriend then gets killed, surely I'm still guilty even if I didn't explicitly order his death?

Dacre has had few years to find the information of just a handful of disputed stories, he came across as evasive/incompetent in sky report. The finance department will have copy invoices for corporate account payments. He may not have dealt personally with the stories but he is in charge. He should have been armed with the notes and answers. I hope the journalists come across as more professional.

OWCH.....re Dacre appearing again tomorrow.....

His cross-examination must end by 3pm after Mr Justice Nicklin said today's questioning of Dacre by barrister David Sherborne was not relevant enough to his ruling.
"I don't consider the large bulk of questions today to have real relevance to what I have to decide," the judge told Sherborne.

@PrayForMyBum yes, I'm not sure putting his hands over his eyes saying I can't see you is going to cut it evidence wise.
The claimants were an absolute shambles and the investigators but I don't think Dacre sounds plausible and it is about plausiblity.
The solicitor who didn't personally see burrows sign statement is daft to put her name to it but she is correct in saying electronic signature can be checked where it came from and needs a passcode to use, so sounds like burrows playing both sides.....no surprise there.

😮 it appears the judge is not impressed with Sherborne either!

Just catching up

Archive link to Guardian article: https://archive.is/OZHGh
Thanks @Justdancevance

I hope no-one minds, but I'm going to copy Dacre's evidence across as we've done for others, so that it will be here in the thread if people want to refer back to it.

Paul Dacre has remained dogged in his defence and has not budged on the fundamentals he told the Leveson Inquiry in 2012.
Giving evidence under oath, Dacre said: "Let me say as clearly and as slowly as I can: I have never placed a story in the Daily Mail as a result of phone hacking that I knew came from phone hacking.
"I know of no cases of phone hacking. Having conducted a major internal inquiry, I'm as confident as I can be that there’s no phone hacking on the Daily Mail."

Dacre is being questioned about a document disclosed in evidence as part of this case that says the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday spent in excess of £3m on private investigators.
David Sherborne, representing the high-profile claimants, says these payments cover the nearly 20-year period during which many of the articles relating to this lawsuit were published.
Asked how he feels about the sum, Dacre says: "I can't answer the question as I need more specifics."

Asked about Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the mother of 1993 murder victim Stephen Lawrence, Dacre says: "My heart bleeds for Baroness Doreen Lawrence."
David Sheborne, for the claimants, asks if the same applies to the other victims in the case.
Dacre replies he'd need to be asked about each individually.
Dacre also says he's "angry and upset" about the allegations made against the Daily Mail.
He says the case has cast a "shadow" over the lives of Daily Mail staff "for the last three years".
In his witness statement, Dacre says proceedings have "had a deeply upsetting, and in some instances, traumatic impact" on many Daily Mail staff.
Dacre says he wants to "clear my name, and the honest staff of the Daily Mail who work for it".

Paul Dacre is shown an invoice commissioned by Paul Field, a former Daily Mail executive for Steve Whittamore, a private investigator.
The invoice includes several vehicle registration numbers which David Sherborne, representing the high-profile claimants, claims were obtained "using deception".
"You know that," Sherborne tells Dacre.
Dacre responds: "I just don't know that. I can't answer these questions."
This follows a line of questioning from Sherborne about Dacre is saying his witness statement that "several key players connected" with the case cannot give evidence as they are now dead.
These include Robin Esser, the Daily Mail's former executive managing editor, and Field.
Questioned about an agency used by the Mail, Dacre says it's his belief it was only ever used for lawful information gathering.

There's a spiky exchange now between barrister David Sherborne and Dacre, regarding whether or not it is legal to obtain someone's name from a mobile phone number.
Dacre tells the court he believes he has read somewhere that it is legal.
Sherborne asks Dacre "where?" - and then asks the same question repeatedly.
"I've asked you 'where?' three times," Sheborne says.
Dacre claims he believes the Information Commissioner may back up his argument.
But Sherborne is dismissive, saying Dacre doesn't know where he read it because it's not right.

Paul Dacre is still being shown several invoices for private investigators, several of them signed off by former Mail on Sunday executive editor Paul Field.
Dacre says he cannot answer questions about the invoices as Field, working for the Mail on Sunday, did work under him at the Daily Mail.
He claims Dacre is remembering things that are "helpful" to his case and "deliberately forgetting things that are unhelpful".
Dacre says: "I don't wish to be unreasonable. I don't know anything about this."

The former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre now describes some of the allegations in this case as "preposterous" - arguing that "a sense of proportion is required".
Dacre argues obtaining numbers and addresses, from what he calls "commercial firms", should not be equated with bugs being placed in people's homes.
He is echoing his own written statement for the case, which refers to "grave and preposterous" allegations.

Dacre is shown a list of payments made by the Daily Mail to JJ Services, a firm ran by Steve Whittamore, a private investigator convicted of breaching information laws in 2005.
The payments cover periods up to 2006.
Another Daily Mail invoice, from a date after Whittamore's conviction, was sent to his email called, "[email protected]", and includes a service labelled "F&F".
In his witness statement, Whittamore says "F&F" stands for lists of BT "friends and family" numbers (the ten "favourite" numbers nominated by customers).
David Sherborne adds: "That's not available in the public domain, is it, Mr Dacre?"

Paul Dacre, in his witness statement, describes Baroness Doreen Lawrence's claims that the Mail used criminality to source its stories as "especially bewildering and bitterly wounding to me personally", given the Mail's 15-year campaign for her murdered son Stephen.
Dacre writes:
"There is much I would like to say on the terrible irony of the paper itself being a victim of injustice but I understand that it is not the purpose of this witness statement."
"And it is, frankly, preposterous to say that such activities were 'habitual and widespread'. I have known Stephen Wright for three decades and do not believe he is remotely capable of doing the things alleged in this claim. He did not ever raise or discuss using these methods with me, or ever mention Baroness Lawrence's bank accounts, telephone records or transcripts of calls, and I would have been appalled if he had."
Dacre also goes on to say how he was personally involved in sourcing one of the articles relied upon in Baroness Lawrence's claim in this case.
The ex-editor refers to the story entitled: "Exclusive: Straw orders major investigation after Daily Mail campaign. LAWRENCE: A PUBLIC INQUIRY".
"I have a very clear recollection that the then Home Secretary Jack Straw personally gave the story to me," Dacre writes.
He says they were on friendly terms, having known each other when they were students at Leeds University, and occasionally had lunch or dinner.
"The media had been anticipating for a month or so that an announcement of a move by the home secretary was imminent," Dacre adds in his written statement. "At some stage…Mr Straw called me to a meeting and volunteered the information that he was setting up an Inquiry.
"He told me that the Daily Mail's campaign for justice for Stephen Lawrence had been a significant factor in his decision to order this inquiry and that is why he felt it right to give the story to me before officially announcing it to the House of Commons."

Paul Dacre is shown a table that lists the number of times different UK publications and their journalists dealt with Steve Whittamore.
The Information Commissioner's Office report, published in 2006, found that the Daily Mail was the top user, with 952 positively identified transactions and 58 different journalists using Whittamore's services.
"I am not going to try and justify these figures," Dacre says.
"This was a wake-up call for me."
Dacre says that after these details were revealed, he "stamped out the use of search agencies" and launched a "blizzard of initiatives" to this point.

Dacre's witness statement says the fact that some of his journalists had worked for other tabloid newspapers, which have admitted to hacking and blagging, shouldn't effectively mean that they're tarred with the same brush.
"I do not accept that because wrongful practices were carried out by some individuals employed by the red tops that all of their journalists were automatically implicated in illegality."
He goes on:
"There were and are many good, honest journalists on such papers.
"Associated [Newspapers Limited] has a long-standing reputation for hiring the best professional journalists wherever they come from.
"And, yes, we hired journalists from The Mirror and The Sun, but we hired many more from papers such as The Telegraph and The Times and even The Guardian…"

Dacre's witness statement talks of his old-fashioned or "antediluvian" grasp of how technology was changing.
He states that his journalists perhaps did not fully grasp how private investigators were using technology to obtain information illegally.
"In the early 2000s, most journalists at the Daily Mail had an extremely hazy understanding of the ramifications of the new digital technology and the relatively new data protection law.
"For my part, I must confess that, while there was little I didn't know about print, I had a somewhat antediluvian appreciation and understanding of matters digital.
"This is not something I am proud of but I didn't ever use a personal computer and barely knew how to logon."

On payments to Steve Whittamore, a private investigator convicted of breaching information laws in 2005, Dacre insists in his witness statement that he was "not personally aware of the extent to which our journalists were using search agencies".
He insists he had "very little involvement in the procedures for approving payments to third parties".
"I only typically became involved in third party payments when, for example, a fee for a buy up was particularly large," he says.
He attributes the use of Whittamore's services to the number of stories they were working on.
"The fact the Daily Mail ran Fleet Street's most demanding and tenacious editorial operations with its reporters and writers having to fill more pages than any other popular newspaper, may explain why someone like Mr Whittamore was used so much.
"And yes, the main use was for phone numbers and addresses.
"But what was worrying was the gradual realisation that inquiry agents like him may have sometimes been using illegal methods to source information and weren’t just accessing legal digital databases."
Dacre details data protection law 'blitz' to inform journalists
Dacre describes in his written statement how his journalists were "blitzed" with verbal warnings, memos and letters "all making it clear that data protection law must be complied with", before they ultimately felt the need to bring in a ban on using such inquiry agents.
Before the ban came in, though, Dacre explains how...
"So ingrained had the use of agencies become, so useful were they as a journalistic tool, so widespread was the belief that they were mainly being used to speedily obtain phone numbers and addresses, so ignorant were the journalists of the legal implications and so ubiquitous was the belief that if everyone was using them it must be alright, that, I confess, it took considerable will power and many forceful conversations on my part and by the Managing Editors to bang these legal implications into people's heads."

The Daily Mail invoices to search agencies and private investigators are brought up again by David Sherborne.
He says Daily Mail executives "saw and approved invoices relating to blags" and "signed them off".
Dacre responds: "Maybe they just signed everything off without reading, maybe they didn't know what blagging meant."
He adds: "I don't think they had a clue what the search agencies were doing."
"In retrospect, one obviously regrets it."

In Dacre's witness statement, the "leaky social circles" of the high-profile claimants in this case are brought up once again as being the source of information in many of the articles that are being questioned.
This has been a common argument from the legal team defending the Mail publisher throughout the proceedings.
Dacre's statement says...
"I do not recall the backgrounds…I suspect that I would have assumed that many of the stories about celebrities came from their highly sophisticated and very expensive PR machines, and, failing that, had emanated from the countless hangers on in their social circles who all too readily for various reasons – from self-empowerment to making money – provide stories to newspapers."

In his written statement to the court, Dacre also references his appearance at the Leveson Inquiry and claims being made in this case that he might have lied while giving evidence.
"I emphatically deny this allegation," he says.
He writes his "main focus" at that time was on establishing that the Daily Mail had not been involved in phone hacking and that he wasn't focused or familiar with the definition of "blagging".
Dacre says...
"If I had been told that there was definitive evidence that a journalist or an agent on their behalf had blagged significant private information which was not in the public interest then I would have been pretty furious."
As for the claimants' allegations against the Daily Mail that it hacked and tapped phones and that this conduct was "habitual and widespread", he writes...
"I utterly reject this. Such blatant illegality would not, I believe, have been countenanced at any level on the paper I edited.
"If I had heard of such things going on, I would have been appalled and would have taken the most draconian measures to expunge them.
"As I stated in my evidence at the Leveson Inquiry, I never placed a story in the Daily Mail as a result of phone hacking or that I knew came from phone hacking and I knew of no cases of phone hacking at the Daily Mail.
"That remains as true now, as it was when I gave the evidence to the Inquiry."

Removed as already posted by @PrayForMyBum

Sorry for multiple posts - just thought we might be glad at some point to have everything in the thread.

Now I can read through!