Prince Harry leaves after the coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla in central London. Photo / AP
Prince Harry leaves after the coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla in central London. Photo / AP
Piers Morgan publicly mocked the Duke of Sussex as their court battle over alleged phone hacking turned personal.
The Duke claims that Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), where Morgan was an editor for nine years, intercepted his voicemails and used private investigators to unlawfully snoop on him.
He also blamed MGN for the end of his relationship with Chelsy Davy and claimed the King, Princess Diana and the Prince and Princess of Wales were targeted by private investigators who were paid a total of more than £10 million ($20m) by Mirror Group.
On the first day of the Duke’s High Court case against MGN, a judge was told that Morgan showed a knowledge of phone hacking during his time as editor and that it was “inconceivable” he knew nothing about alleged illegal activity happening on his watch.
Morgan, who has been a leading critic of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex since they moved to America, responded by tweeting a still from the animation comedy South Park, in which the couple are depicted touring the world’s television studios to demand privacy.
The Duke is one of four people suing MGN for alleged unlawful information gathering.
At the start of what is scheduled to be a seven-week trial, MGN said it accepted there had been unlawful information gathering in relation to the Duke, for which it “unreservedly apologises”.
It denies phone hacking but said its past activities “warrant compensation” in his case.
Documents submitted to the court gave examples highlighting Morgan’s alleged knowledge of phone hacking.
The journalist Omid Scobie, who is the Duke and Duchess’s biographer, claims to have heard Morgan discussing the use of voicemails when he was a journalism student doing work experience in 2002. He will give evidence to the court next week.
Court documents state that Scobie “recalls during one of those days in the office the editor, Piers Morgan, came over to talk to someone about a story relating to Kylie Minogue and her boyfriend James Gooding”.
The documents add: “Mr Morgan asked how confident they were in the reporting, and was told that the information had come from voicemails.”
The Duke’s legal team also cited evidence from Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, a former Downing Street strategic communications director, who claims Morgan explained to him over a lunch in 2002 how to hack phones and admitted the Daily Mirror had broken a story about Ulrika Jonsson’s affair with Sven-Goran Eriksson, the then England manager, by hacking their voicemails.
The broadcaster Jeremy Paxman told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards that he attended a lunch at which Morgan teased Jonsson by telling her he had heard voicemail messages left for her by Eriksson.
David Seymour, former political editor of the Daily Mirror, also claimed in court papers that Morgan played a tape in the newsroom of a voicemail left by Sir Paul McCartney for his former wife Heather Mills, and was “laughing mockingly” as he did so.
In an interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, recorded before the case began, Morgan - who edited the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004 - repeated his denials of any knowledge of phone hacking, saying: “I’ve never hacked a phone, I’ve never told anyone to hack a phone,” but it was impossible to be sure that no journalist had written a story based on an intercepted voicemail.
Prince Harry claimed Davy decided “a royal life was not for her” because of illegal snooping by MGN journalists.
Prince Harry leaves after the coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla in central London. Photo / AP
The Duke, who dated the Zimbabwean on and off for six years, said in court papers that her decision to end their relationship was “incredibly upsetting” for him at the time.
He said he suffered “huge bouts of depression and paranoia” because he felt “he could not trust anybody”. Davy called time on their relationship in 2010.
A written summary of the Duke’s claim alleges MGN journalists pursued him and Davy wherever they went, which “placed a huge amount of unnecessary stress and strain” on their relationship.
The Duke alleges MGN’s journalists were only able to find out the couple’s whereabouts by illegally accessing information about their travel arrangements.
The Duke’s legal team claim suspicious calls were made to mobile phones belonging to Davy and also the Princess of Wales, as well as Frances Shand Kydd, Princess Diana’s mother.
The Duke lists 313 “highly suspicious” calls made to friends, family and associates between 2003 and 2011.
Seven of the calls were made to phones belonging to Davy between 2007 and 2009, one was made to Shand Kydd’s phone in 2003, two were made to the Princess of Wales’s phone in 2004 and 2010, and 22 were made to Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, his then private secretary, between 2003 and 2005.
The vast majority of the calls - 270 in all - were made to Paddy Harverson, the Duke’s then communications secretary, between 2004 and 2011.
Others who were allegedly targeted include the Duke’s friends Guy Pelly and Jamie Murray Wells, and former equerry Mark Dyer.
The court was told Mirror Group made 267 payments to private investigators to find information about Princess Diana, the King, and the Prince and Princess of Wales as part of a £10.7 million ($21.2m) total spend on private investigators between 1995 and 2011.
Documents submitted to the court claim MGN commissioned investigators 114 times in relation to the Duke between 1997 and 2011.
It is alleged that MGN also made eight payments relating to the Prince of Wales between August 12, 1997 - less than three weeks before the death of Princess Diana - and September 2004, and seven payments relating to Diana herself, from May 1996 until September 1999.
Investigators were also paid to look into the King six times between May 2000 and October 2002; the Princess of Wales 12 times between 2002 and 2010; and Shand-Kydd three times in 2001 and 2002.
Another 14 payments were allegedly made for information gathered about the late Caroline Flack, the television presenter who briefly dated the Duke, between 2009 and 2011.
As well as admitting some wrongdoing in the case of the Duke, MGN - now part of Reach plc - also admitted to some wrongdoing in the case of Nikki Sanderson, the former Coronation Street actor.
However, it denies wrongdoing in the cases of Michael Turner, a fellow Coronation Street actor, and Fiona Wightman, ex-wife of the comedian Paul Whitehouse.
The four claim phone hacking, “blagging” and the payment to private investigators for illegally obtained information was “habitual and widespread” across the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.
The claimants allege that unlawful information gathering started as early as 1991 and went on until at least 2011, and that board members at the company knew about the activity from at least 1999.
Documents submitted to the High Court allege that “senior executives not only failed to take steps to stop these unlawful activities but instead sought to conceal them, and deliberately lied to and misled the public, the Leveson Inquiry and Trinity Mirror’s own shareholders by falsely denying their existence.”
