The final phase in the game of chicken being played by lawyers acting for Prince Harry and those acting for Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloids is now underway, although its details are obscured by rival versions of what has now actually happened.
On Tuesday the judge overseeing the long drawn-out cases in which the Duke of Sussex and some forty other claimants are suing News Group Newspapers, NGN, as victims of prolonged hacking by the tabloids seemed to hand a significant victory to Murdoch. He ruled out an attempt to include Murdoch himself in a new raft of claims.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Fancourt said, “There is a desire on the part of some of those running the litigation on the claimants’ side to shoot at ‘trophy’ targets, whether those are political issues or high-profile individuals.”