Prince Harry’s phone hacking trial against the publisher of the Daily Mirror has kicked off without him present — and the judge was not happy.
Harry’s lawyer said the Duke of Sussex would not be available to testify after opening statements on Monday because he caught a flight back from Los Angeles on Sunday after the birthday of his two-year-old daughter, Lilibet.
“I’m a little surprised,” Justice Timothy Fancourt said, noting he had directed Harry to be in court for the first day of his case.
Mirror Group Newspapers’ lawyer, Andrew Green, said he was “deeply troubled” by Harry’s absence on opening day.
Harry originally was scheduled to testify on Tuesday. His lawyer was told last week the duke should attend the trial on Monday in case the opening statements concluded before the end of the day.
The case is the first of the Duke of Sussex’s several lawsuits against the media to go to trial, and one of three alleging tabloid publishers unlawfully snooped on him.
Harry will be the first member of the British royal family in more than a century to testify in court. He is expected to describe his anguish and anger over being hounded by the media throughout his life, and its impact on those around him.
The 38-year-old has blamed paparazzi for causing the car crash that killed his mother, Princess Diana, and said harassment and intrusion by the UK press, including allegedly racist articles, led him and his wife, Meghan, to flee to the US in 2020 and leave royal life behind.
Articles he has cited date back to his 12th birthday, in 1996, when the Mirror reported Harry was feeling “badly” about the divorce of his mother and father, now King Charles III.
Harry said in court documents the reports made him wonder who he could trust as he feared friends and associates were betraying him by leaking information to the newspapers.
His circle of friends grew smaller and he suffered “huge bouts of depression and paranoia”. Relationships fell apart as the women in his life – and even their family members – were “dragged into the chaos”.
He says he later discovered the source wasn’t disloyal friends but aggressive journalists and the private investigators they hired to eavesdrop on voicemails and track him to locations as remote as Argentina and an island off Mozambique.
Mirror Group Newspapers said it didn’t hack Harry’s phone and its articles were based on legitimate reporting techniques.
The publisher admitted and apologised for hiring a private eye to dig up dirt on one of Harry’s nights out at a bar, but the resulting 2004 article headlined “Sex on the beach with Harry” is not among the 33 in question at trial.
Australian Associated Press