LONDON (AP) – A lawyer for Prince Harry on Thursday outlined the royal family’s case against a newspaper publisher and questioned a former tabloid reporter about information inserted into stories by then-publisher Piers Morgan.
On the final day of evidence, attorney David Sherborne questioned former Daily Mirror royal correspondent Jane Kerr, whose text appears in several of the 33 articles Harry cites as examples of intrusion by publisher Mirror Group Newspapers.
The attorney suggested to Kerr that some of the information in their stories came from phone hacking.
“That was absolutely not the case,” Kerr said with a touch of anger.
“Never have I ever intercepted a voicemail. I don’t even know how,” Kerr added. She also denied knowing about any violations of the law by the newspaper’s freelance journalists or private investigators.
Kerr admitted in her written testimony that Morgan, who edited the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, “occasionally threw information into a story or directed it” without knowing the source.
Asked by Sherborne for quotes in a story, she said, “I can’t say for sure where I got them from because I can’t remember. It’s possible Piers gave it to me.”
Morgan has denied knowing about the Mirror’s phone hacking, and the company denies Harry’s claims. The Mirror Group has previously paid more than £100m ($125m) to settle hundreds of wrongful information gathering lawsuits and released an apology to victims of phone hacking in 2015.
Harry, who flew from his home in California to testify earlier in the week, was not before the Supreme Court on Thursday. He spent a day and a half on the witness stand on Tuesday and Wednesday answering questions about his allegations that British tabloids unlawfully snooped on his life throughout his childhood and young adulthood.
He alleges that the Mirror newspapers hacked phones, bugged vehicles and used other illegal methods to obtain personal information, which they circulated as royal scoops. He said the intrusion poisoned relationships with friends, teachers and girlfriends – and even created tension with brother Prince William – and prompted “bouts of depression and paranoia”.
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Mirror Group Newspapers has apologized for a case in which it hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on Harry, which was not among the allegations it had made. He either denies his claims or doesn’t admit them.
Harry, 38, is one of four plaintiffs whose claims against Mirror Group Newspapers will be heard together in the High Court in London. The hearings are scheduled to last until the end of June, with Judge Timothy Fancourt expected to deliver his verdict a few weeks later.
Harry left royal life in 2020 citing intolerable media scrutiny and alleged racism towards his wife Meghan and is on a mission to reform Britain’s media. He is also suing two other newspaper publishers for alleged hacker attacks.