Prince Harry has been clamoring for his day in court in his war against the British media and was set to testify in the first of his five pending legal cases. Opening statements were scheduled today. But in a stunning development, Harry failed to show up for his own much-anticipated case. He explained that he was otherwise occupied in celebrating his daughter Lilibet’s second birthday in Los Angeles. The Duke of Sussex has now been accused of wasting court time after skipping the first day of proceedings.
Andrew Green KC, for Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), said it was “extraordinary” that the Duke was not in the High Court on Monday.
In a clear understatement, Justice Fancourt, the judge hearing the case, added he was “a little surprised” to learn of Harry’s absence, and said he had given a direction for witnesses to be available the day before their evidence was due in case opening speeches ran short.
The Duke’s barrister, David Sherborne, told the court that Harry will likely enter the witness box on Tuesday after flying into the UK overnight from Los Angeles.
Mr. Green said he wished to have at least a day and a half to cross examine the duke and was “deeply troubled” he would not be attending before Tuesday, which may lead to “wasted time” on Monday afternoon.
The Duke is suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) for damages over alleged unlawful information gathering.
Harry has said in court documents that he had assiduously avoided the courts to prevent testifying about matters that might be embarrassing to the royal family, but in the end his frustration and anger at the press, however, drove him to break convention by suing newspaper owners.
The Daily Mirror case is one of three Harry has brought alleging phone hacking and other invasions of his privacy, dating back to when he was a boy.
In court documents, he described his relationship with the press as “uneasy”. Speculation is rampant however, that the case is as much about the past as the present. Harry has made no secret of the fact that he never got over the tragic end of his mother, Princess Diana, and he has bitterly blamed the paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed her.
He also cites harassment and intrusion by the British press and “vicious, persistent attacks” on his wife, Meghan, including racist articles, as the reason the couple left royal life and fled to the U.S. in 2020.
News that British journalists hacked phones for scoops first emerged in 2006 with the arrest of a private investigator and the royals reporter at the now-defunct News of the World. The two were jailed, and the reporter apologized for hacking phones used by aides of Harry, his older brother, Prince William, and their father.
In addition to Mirror Group Newspapers, he is suing Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and Associated Newspapers Ltd., which owns the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.
The claims are similar: that journalists and people they employed listened to phone messages and committed other unlawful acts to snoop on Harry and invade his privacy.
Skeptics repeatedly point out that a couple who claim to make such efforts to preserve their privacy would not engage in clamorous attention-seeking activities such as making Netflix documentaries about their private lives or discussing intimate details in an interview with Oprah. This incongruity between Harry and Meghan’s anger against media intrusions into their privacy, and their own publicity-seeking actions, severely undermines the credibility of the Sussexes.
This latest development, failing to show up for his much anticipated case, is the most puzzling of all.
