Prince Harry has been accused of “deliberately destroying” potential evidence relating to his High Court phone hacking claim against the publisher of The Sun, a court has heard.
The Duke of Sussex, 39, was awarded $180,700 in December after London’s High Court ruled he had been the victim of “modest” phone-hacking and other unlawful information gathering by journalists on British newspapers.
But now, more than six months after the ruling, an attorney for the publisher of the British tabloid has accused Harry of engaging in “shocking” and “extraordinary” obfuscation.
Attorney Anthony Hudson said at High Court that Harry had deliberately destroyed text messages with the ghostwriter who penned his bombshell memoir, “Spare,” released in Jan. 2023.
The Duke’s lawyer has denied the claims, saying News Group Newspapers was engaging in a “classic fishing expedition” by requesting documents so late in the case.
“NGN’s tactical and sluggish approach to disclosure wholly undermines the deliberately sensational assertion that the claimant [Harry] has not properly carried out the disclosure exercise,” Harry’s attorney, David Sherborne, said in court papers.
“This is untrue. In fact, the claimant has already made clear that he has conducted extensive searches, going above and beyond his obligations.”
In response, Hudson claimed that the father of two had created an “obstacle course” to the documents the publisher is seeking.
“If the claimant wanted his documents from his former solicitors’ or from the royal household … he would have got them,” the attorney said.
The court heard that the Duke of Sussex must now personally disclose how drafts of his protocol-shattering book, as well as messages between him and his ghostwriter, were destroyed “well after” he launched the lawsuit in 2019.
On Thursday, Justice Timothy Fancourt, presiding, said it was “troubling” that the documents had been wiped after the case was already underway.
Justice Fancourt said efforts must now be made to retrieve messages between Harry and JR Moehringer, his ghostwriter.
The Judge had also ordered the royal’s legal team to write to the King’s private secretary, his treasurer and keeper of the Privy Purse, asking them to submit all records of communication with Harry.
The Post has reached out to reps for the Duke of Sussex for comment.
The prince – who became the first senior British royal for 130 years to give evidence in court when he appeared as the star witness at the trial in June 2023 – had sued Mirror Group Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People in 2019.
Harry said he was targeted by MGN for 15 years from 1996 and that more than 140 stories which appeared in its papers were the result of unlawful information gathering, though the trial only considered 33 of these.
With Post wires
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