Murdoch Rags Apologize And Settle With Prince Harry

The Associated Press reports:

Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. tabloids made a rare apology to Prince Harry in settling his privacy invasion lawsuit and will pay him a substantial sum, his lawyer announced Wednesday.

News Group Newspapers offered a “full and unequivocal apology to the Duke of Sussex for the serious intrusion by The Sun between 1996 and 2011 into his private life, including incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for The Sun,” attorney David Sherborne read from settlement statement in court.

The statement itself was remarkable in breadth, acknowledging “phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information by journalists and private investigators” aimed at Harry, allegations NGN had strongly denied before trial.

The New York Times reports:

The settlement, announced the day after the long-awaited trial was scheduled to begin, spared News Group Newspapers from weeks of damaging testimony about phone hacking and other unlawful methods it used more than a decade ago to ferret out information about Harry and other prominent figures.

It also spared Harry, 40, the younger son of King Charles III, from heavy financial risk, regardless of how he had fared in court. Under English law, Harry would have been required to pay the legal costs of both sides if the court had not awarded him an amount commensurate with what News Group Newspapers offered him in the settlement.

News Group Newspapers did not disclose the amount it had agreed to pay Harry or his fellow claimant, Tom Watson, a former deputy leader of the Labour Party, to whom News Group also offered a “full and unequivocal apology,” but in both cases it said the amounts were “substantial.”

This morning CNN reported that the tabloids faced an 8-figure judgment at trial.