A UK judge decided on Friday to allow Prince Harry’s lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid publisher, alleging illegal information collection, to go to trial next year.
Harry, 39, claims in one of many lawsuits he has filed against UK newspaper publishers that he was singled out by reporters and private detectives employed by the tabloid The Sun.
Dozens of additional claimants have joined him in the case.
Its publisher, News Group Newspapers (NGN), has refuted allegations of illicit behavior and requested a postponement of a prospective trial by the London High Court, which was scheduled to begin in January of next year.
It wanted a narrower-in-scope preliminary trial held to decide whether the cases have been brought too late and outside a legal time limit.
But in a ruling Friday, judge Timothy Fancourt dismissed the request.
He said there was a “plainly considerable risk” of a preliminary trial “increasing costs overall and delaying” a full trial by up to two years. “That is unsatisfactory,” the judge added.
It comes two days after actor Hugh Grant settled his claim against NGN over allegations of unlawful information gathering, saying he wanted to avoid a potential legal bill of millions of pounds.
While no details of the settlement were given, Grant said on social media he had been offered an “enormous sum of money” not to go to court.
NGN said the claim had been settled “without admission of liability” and that it was “in both parties’ financial interests not to progress to a costly trial”.
This year, Harry, the younger son of King Charles III, reached a settlement with Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) in a long-running legal battle. Harry had claimed that MGN’s journalists were involved in illegal and misleading practices, such as phone hacking.
The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday are published by Associated Newspapers, which the prince is also suing.
