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Prince Harry and six other well-known figures who sued over alleged privacy breaches attempted to strike a deal with Associated Newspapers in the weeks before the trial started.
The Times can reveal that representatives for the litigants approached a retired senior police detective to act as an intermediary and approach the publisher in an effort to settle the row in advance of Harry giving evidence to the High Court.
However, it is understood the offer to discuss a possible settlement was rejected outright by Associated, publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.
The actress Liz Hurley, with her son Damian at the High Court in January, was among the claimantsHENRY NICHOLLS/AFP/Getty Images
The nearly three-month High Court trial went ahead and in a devastating judgment handed down on Tuesday, Mr Justice Nicklin rejected all the claims against the publisher. Harry and his co-claimants now face up to £50 million in legal bills.
In a ruling running to more than 400 pages, Nicklin found that the claimants — who included Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley — had failed to prove any wrongdoing by the newspapers’ journalists.
Senior figures at Associated have hailed the ruling as a vindication of the decision to defend the action in court.
It has now emerged that shortly before Christmas, only weeks prior to the trial starting in January, a former senior Fleet Street journalist acted for the claimants as a “back channel” to open unofficial negotiations between the two sides.
James Hanning, a former deputy editor of The Independent on Sunday, has confirmed that he was asked to explore the possibility of settlement talks between the claimants and the publisher.
Hanning said that a second informal intermediary was involved as he approached the retired police officer who was known to and trusted by Stephen Wright, the Daily Mail’s associate editor and former crime reporter.
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According to Hanning, the putative settlement offer amounted to “a suggestion to talk sensibly”. He added: “Any specific headings that were mentioned would have been ‘for discussion’. There was no suggestion of there being a ‘take it or leave it’ offer from the claimants.”
But ultimately the approach, which is understood not to have involved the lawyers on either side of the dispute, petered out when the newspapers were said to have “refused to engage at all”.
In 2014 Hanning published The News Machine: Hacking, the Untold Story, with Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who was sentenced to six months in jail in 2007 after pleading guilty to phone hacking offences at the now-defunct News of the World.
It is understood that the first approach by the claimants — who also included Sadie Frost and the former Liberal Democrat MP Sir Simon Hughes — was made last December and that if successful it would have avoided Harry giving evidence in court.
Any deal could also have involved the suggestion that both sides “drop hands” and walk away from the litigation while bearing their own costs.
However, the publisher rejected the informal offer and the trial went ahead, resulting in Tuesday’s judgment against the claimants.
The celebrities claimed they were victims of phone hacking, bugging and “blagging” by journalists and private detectives working on behalf of Associated.
But the judge dismissed the allegations, ruling: “In substance, the claimants’ case invites the court to conclude that, because the information was private and because Associated cannot positively explain how it was sourced, the article must have been unlawfully sourced. That is not a permissible approach.”
Responding to the ruling, Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail between 1992 and 2018, described the judgment as “not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists — several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives — but a free press generally”.
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Harry issued an extraordinary joint statement with Lawrence, a Labour peer, describing the ruling as “a complete and obvious whitewash”. Associated Newspapers was approached for comment.
One of the most controversial figures associated with the case is Evan Harris, a 60-year-old surgeon, former MP and former executive director of Hacked Off, a group that campaigns over allegedly unethical practices in the media. He was one of the main witnesses on behalf of the claimants in the case against Associated Newspapers. Here we look at his role in the trial, as well as Harry’s solicitor, both of whom faced criticism from the judge.
What did Harris tell the court?
His evidence centred on his view of how information referred to in the claims was obtained by the newspapers, and the purpose and context of Byline Investigates, a website connected to Hacked Off.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Nicklin noted that the claimants relied on Harris’s evidence for “a detailed and contemporaneous account of the investigative and campaigning work that led to the identification of potential claims”. His evidence was billed as explaining the role of Hacked Off and its “associated journalists” in uncovering alleged unlawful information gathering.
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Was the judge impressed by Harris’s evidence?
Not much — the judge said that he approached it “with caution”. The judge added that while he did not find Harris generally to be “a dishonest person” or for his evidence to be broadly dishonest, he was critical of one specific point.
In 2019, Harris emailed one of the claimants, his fellow former Liberal Democrat MP, Sir Simon Hughes, to suggest that articles would be published on the Byline website that would obviate limitation problems — in other words, that Hughes was bringing his claim after the legal deadline.
The judge noted that Hughes had “advance sight of the proposed articles and input into the timing of publication; and those articles were then relied upon in his pleading as the basis for the date on which he first knew he had a claim”.
As a result, the judge said, “in that particular respect, I find that [Harris’s] proposal was improper and dishonest”.
However, the judge found that Hughes did nothing wrong, saying that he had not “shared Dr Harris’s appreciation of the limitation purpose, or that he acted dishonestly”.
Does that mean Harris could face prosecution for perjury?
No. Specific judicial findings of dishonesty in civil proceedings are not uncommon and they usually differ from an allegation that a witness has committed perjury, which requires a finding of wilfully making a false statement that the witness knew was untrue.
Are there any potential ramifications of the judge’s finding regarding Harris’s evidence?
Yes, in relation to costs. A relatively recent parallel is the “Wagatha Christie” libel battle in 2022 in which the court ruled that Rebekah Vardy’s conduct during the litigation had been dishonest. That resulted in the court ordering Vardy to pay Coleen Rooney’s legal costs on the “indemnity” basis, which creates a punitive element to the assessment. If that were applied in the Harry litigation, it could mean the judge might presume that Associated’s stated costs were proportionate and therefore recoverable.
Did any of the claimants’ lawyers face criticism in the ruling?
Yes. The judge described Anjlee Sangani, the solicitor who had represented Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, Liz Hurley, Sir Elton John and David Furnish as “not an impressive witness”. He said that Sangani — whose firm, Gunnercooke, had ceased representing those claimants by the time the judgment was handed down on Tuesday — “appeared to minimise, or fail properly to appreciate the seriousness of her certification” of a crucial witness statement. Sangani was said to have delegated the task of certification, which, said the judge, “gives rise to a material concern as to the integrity of the process for which” the lawyer was responsible.