4th October, 2019
Prince Harry has extended legal action against the bosses of two other British tabloids, The Sun and the Daily Mirror. Their offence: phone hacking, days after his wife Meghan Markle sued The-Mail-On-Sunday.
Buckingham Palace, according to metro.co.uk, confirmed on Friday that the claims have been filed at the High Court over alleged illegal interception of voicemail messages by the two newspapers.
A spokesperson for News Group Newspapers, publishers of The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, said: ‘We confirm that a claim has been issued by the Duke of Sussex.
‘We have no further comment to make at the current time’.
A source at Reach plc, which owns the Mirror, said they were aware that proceedings had been issued but had not yet received them, so they were unable to comment further.
Prince Harry had earlier filed a libel action against Daily Mail over breach of privacy, by publishing a letter by his wife, Meghan Markle to her father.
According to the BBC, it is assumed the new case is related to the phone hacking scandal of the early 2000s.
Court filings of 27 September, first reported by Byline Investigates, suggest two separate claims were made in the prince’s name against Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers and the Reach plc subsidiary MGN Ltd last week.
Issuing proceedings is the first court step of possible legal action against a defendant. Once papers are lodged with the court, the claimant has four months to decide whether to proceed with the action by serving the defendant. Until that action has been taken, it would be possible for a defendant to be unaware of the content of the claim.