The Daily Mail’s publisher has “strongly denied” an allegation made by a lawyer for Prince Harry that journalists’ emails and documents had been deleted.
The allegation was subject to a warning by a judge at the latest preliminary hearing in the case brought by a group of high-profile individuals including Harry, campaigner Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish.
They are suing Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) for alleged misuse of private information.
The group has accused the publisher of allegedly carrying out or commissioning unlawful activities, such as hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars and burglaries to order.
ANL firmly denies the allegations and is defending the legal claims, with cost budgets for both sides combined totalling more than £38m.
David Sherborne, for the individuals, said in his written submissions that “there have been deletions of some, but not all, of journalists’ emails” at ANL, and that some documents were destroyed during the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking.
In court, Catrin Evans KC, for ANL, denied the allegation, stating it was a claim of “deliberate tampering with the documents which is of course strongly denied”.
She added: “We regard it as important to put down a marker that it is not appropriate to come to this court, there are clearly going to be further hearings in these proceedings and face allegations like that.
“It is not professionally proper to make them.”
Mr Justice Nicklin said that evidence would need to be provided for such allegations, adding: “This sort of allegation would be career-ending and possibly give rise to potential criminal proceedings, so it could not be more serious.”
Hundreds of people, including the Duke of Sussex, have previously brought legal action against other newspaper publishers over allegations of unlawful information gathering, including related to phone hacking.
Harry was previously awarded £140,600 in damages after suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) and faces a trial in January 2025 for his claim against Sun publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN).
Evans said that it would be “wrong” to treat the claims brought against ANL in the same way as cases against those publishers.
She continued: “Critically, the ‘bedrock’ of liability in the MGN and NGN cases consisted of criminal convictions of certain journalists and far-reaching admissions about the extensive use of unlawful acts … there is no similar ‘bedrock’ of matters here.”
Sherborne told the court that the individuals “were, in different ways, each the victim of numerous unlawful acts”, including “illegally intercepting voicemail messages; listening into live landline calls; (and) obtaining private information” between 1993 and 2018.
The court also heard from lawyers for ANL that Lady Lawrence was “alerted” to the potential legal claim by a text message from Prince Harry in January 2022.
Evans said in written submissions: “Litigation appears to have been contemplated by Baroness Lawrence almost immediately after the text was received by her.”
Evans also told the court that Lady Lawrence met with lawyers Harry had been working with a few days later.
However, the barrister later said she has lost “and possibly deleted” the text sent by Harry, and said in court that ANL wanted an “explanation” as “it has not been explained as to the circumstances of the discovery of it being missing”.
Sherborne said in his written submissions that some claimants, including Lady Lawrence, initially declined to provide the information about “personal watershed moments” in their claims, as the demand included “impermissible requests for evidence and privileged information”.
He said: “In general, the claimants refused to provide the information sought, on the basis that it was not reasonably necessary or proportionate to enable the defendant to prepare its case or understand the case it had to meet.”
He said that they then “voluntarily provided” the information earlier in November, and claimed in court that ANL had “accused (Lady Lawrence) of some nefarious intent in that she couldn’t find the message” from the duke.
Sherborne also said that ANL should disclose further documents, including an Excel spreadsheet detailing alleged payments to private investigators between 2005 and 2007, which Evans said was an “entirely premature demand”.
He said they wanted “clear and comprehensive answers to what documents still exist and what documents have been either destroyed or deleted”, and continued: “We have reached the point where we say there should be a clear and comprehensive picture given.”
The hearing before Mr Justice Nicklin and Judge David Cook is due to conclude on Wednesday, with a further hearing expected in May next year.
The full trial of the claims could then be held in early 2026.
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