Prince Harry’s request to add charges against Rupert Murdoch denied by London judge

Prince Harry sought to escalate his legal action against The Sun newspaper by implicating Rupert Murdoch and other leaders in the suppression and disposal of evidence pertaining to their unlawful conduct. However, a judge in London said he can’t do that.

Judge Timothy Fancourt made a decision in the High Court about one of Prince Harry’s privacy lawsuits against British tabloids. The ruling had some good and some bad parts for Prince Harry.

Fancourt said no to some changes Harry wanted to make, but he let the prince add more claims against journalists and private investigators who he says spied on him unfairly to get stories.

But Fancourt said accusations that Murdoch ignored wrongdoing did not add anything important to claims against News Group Newspapers, or NGN. The judge said that the claims already have people who are trusted by Murdoch, like his son James and Rebekah Brooks, who used to be an editor at News of the World and The Sun.

The judge said that Harry tried to blame other executives to promote a political agenda.

“The people in charge of the lawsuit want to target important issues or famous people for attention,” Fancourt wrote. The claimants’ team might want to blame the leader, but it won’t help in finding out what Ms. James Murdoch, and other important company leaders may have known and participated in the situation.

Brooks is the top boss of News UK, which is part of News Corp. They oversee The Sun and The Times newspapers, among others. James Murdoch quit his job at News Corp. In the year 2020.

Rupert Murdoch, who is 93 years old, was the top boss at News Corp. The person in charge of News International, now called News UK, was the parent company of NGN, which was in charge when News of the World closed down. Murdoch quit being in charge of Fox News and News Corp last autumn.

Both sides said they won in the decision before the trial next year, but Fancourt said it was a partial win with the defense getting an advantage on the issues they argued about.

The News Group said it was happy with the choice.

In 2011, the company said sorry to people whose voicemails were listened to by the News of the World. The newspaper shut down because of a scandal involving hacking into people’s phones. NGN stated that they have resolved 1,300 claims for their newspapers, even though The Sun has never admitted fault.

In March, there was a three-day hearing where people accused NGN of doing bad things, like actor Hugh Grant said The Sun listened to his phone calls, put bugs in his car, and broke into his home to spy on him.

After that, Grant said he agreed to take a lot of money to settle his lawsuit, even though he didn’t really want to.

Grant explained that he had to agree to a settlement because of a court rule that could have made him pay a lot of money for legal fees, even if he won the case in court. A court rule was trying to prevent the courts from getting too busy. It would have made Grant pay the legal fees for both sides if he won at trial but got less money than the settlement offer.

Lawyer David Sherborne thinks that Harry might have to reach an agreement for the same reason.

Harry has a similar lawsuit waiting to be heard against the owner of the Daily Mail.

He won his first trial case last year when Fancourt discovered that phone hacking was happening a lot at Mirror Group Newspapers. Besides the court decision, he resolved the remaining accusations, which also covered his lawyer’s expenses.