Judge asks Prince Harry to explain how communications with ghostwriter were destroyed

LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry was hit with a hefty legal bill Thursday and ordered to explain how communications with the ghostwriter of his memoir were destroyed after a lawyer for The Sun tabloid accused him of engaging in “shocking” obfuscation in his lawsuit claiming the newspaper violated his privacy by illegally snooping on him.

Judge Timothy Fancourt said it was disturbing that all communications between the Duke of Sussex and writer JR Moehringer, as well as all drafts of the best-selling book ‘Spare’, had been destroyed.

Lawyer Anthony Hudson told the High Court that Harry had created an “obstacle course” to obtain documents which should have been disclosed in litigation and that “we had to force them out of the plaintiff.” feet and screams.

News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, was awarded 132,000 pounds ($167,000) in legal costs for largely succeeding in a request for more research to be undertaken into data on the laptop from Harry and on all text messages and chats on WhatsApp and Signal which could be useful to The Defense.

Harry’s lawyer said News Group was engaging in a “classic fishing expedition” to obtain documents he should have requested earlier for a trial scheduled for January.

“NGN’s slow, tactical approach to disclosure totally undermines the deliberately sensational claim that the claimant (Harry) failed to properly carry out the disclosure exercise,” lawyer David Sherborne said in documents judicial. “It’s wrong. In fact, the Applicant has already made it clear that he has conducted extensive research, going above and beyond his duties.

The hearing is the latest in a series of battles Harry has waged against Britain’s biggest tabloids, which accuse Prince Harry of hacking his phone and hiring private investigators who used illegal measures to find compromising information about him.

Harry is one of dozens of plaintiffs, including actor Hugh Grant, alleging that between 1994 and 2016, News Group journalists and investigators they hired violated their privacy by intercepting voicemails, tapping phones, bugging cars and using deception to gain access to confidential information.

The dispute arose from a phone hacking scandal that broke out in 2011 at NGN’s News of the World channel, which subsequently closed its doors.

NGN has issued an unreserved apology to victims of the News of the World’s voicemail interception. NGN said it had settled 1,300 complaints about its newspapers, although The Sun has never accepted responsibility.

The Sun won a partial victory last year when Fancourt dismissed Harry’s phone-tapping allegations because he had waited too long to file a complaint. It ruled that Harry should have known about the scandal that engulfed the News of the World and, therefore, could have brought the case within the six-year statute of limitations.

The newspaper wants to use the time limit defense at trial and is seeking communications that could show Harry knew about allegations that the newspapers used other illegal methods to dig up information before 2013 – six years before he will not sue in 2019.

Fancourt said older communications, even those dating back to the publication of his memoir in 2023, could provide evidence that he was aware of the illegal information gathering years earlier.

He ordered Harry, who was not present in court, to provide a witness statement explaining what happened to communications with Moehringer.

Sherborne said Harry did not use text or messaging apps to discuss the illegal collection of information.

But Fancourt said that could be contradicted because Moehringer wrote in a New Yorker article that he and Harry “texted 24 hours a day.”

Fancourt recently ruled that Harry could not expand his lawsuit to add allegations that Rupert Murdoch, who was chief executive of the company that controlled NGN, was part of an effort to cover up and destroy evidence of illegal activity.