Prince Harry Blasts 'Whitewashed' Court Verdict — Alleges the Judge Had a Reason to Favor the Publisher
After hours of the court verdict being out, Prince Harry has finally issued a scathing statement against the ruling.
When the court verdict in Prince Harry’s case against Associated Newspapers was released, he had been at Chatham House for an event of the Invictus Games. For hours, as details of the court ruling were published online, royal fans waited for the Duke of Sussex’s say on the unfortunate matter. He has now finally released a scathing, lengthy statement, mincing no words in expressing his feelings about the loss. He also, in his statement, subtly mentioned the judge's own past.
He said that he and other claimants had gone to the court “seeking justice and accountability” but they “received neither”. “This judgment represents a complete reversal of the position which previous Judges have taken in relation to the hacking claims successfully brought against both News Group Newspapers and Mirror Group Newspapers (who were represented by, at the time, the Judge who made this decision),” he added, mentioning Justice Nichlin, via Hello!
Notably, Justice Nicklin, the judge who ruled against Harry this time, previously worked as a barrister representing News Group Newspapers and Mirror Group Newspapers in those earlier phone-hacking cases, the same ones Harry successfully won.
The entire basis of the legal battle was based on the claim that the Daily Mail had used unlawful methods to gather information. In his statement, he wrote that the “generic findings” about different private investigators who were found by the courts to have carried out “unlawful activity” at the same time in relation to “similar stories and well-known individuals” were “wholly ignored”. Harry added, “The fact that this Court has chosen to dismiss them represents an inconsistency which is hard to understand or reconcile with common sense, or the evidence heard in the court room itself.”
He didn’t hesitate in claiming that the courts were protecting the Daily Mail. "It is a complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected. However, the lengths to which the Court has gone to exonerate the Mail is as shocking as it is totally unwarranted,” he wrote. “When the Court says there is not sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, despite the documents showing otherwise, then one does wonder how justice was ever going to be achieved,” he added further. Harry felt like there was “one rule for the newspapers and another for the claimants”. He added, “While the Claimants presented evidence, Mail journalists simply gave denials, and the Court chose uncritically to believe them, even in the face of inconsistencies, contradictions and blatant untruths that were obvious to neutral observers in Court when compared to the documents.”
The Duke had submitted 14 articles published in the Daily Mail between 2001 and 2013, the majority of which concerned his relationship with then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy. The newspaper was the first to identify her in 2004. In his statement, he wrote that one need not look past the fact that “when another private investigator emailed one of the journalists with the actual British Airways seat number and ticketing details for a young girl simply visiting her boyfriend in return for payment”.
Harry concluded by saying, “We presented to the Court evidence which we believed was compelling at the time and remains so now.” He thanked the claimants’ legal team for “all their hard work” and all the witnesses “who were brave enough to come forward in the pursuit of justice”.
