Prince Harry must explain missing messages in News Group Newspapers lawsuit

The Duke of Sussex has been ordered by a High Court judge to explain why posts that could be relevant to his case against the publisher of The Sun were deleted.

News Group Newspapers – which also published the now-defunct News of the World – had requested a one-day hearing to obtain access to documents, emails and messages relating to Prince Harry’s complaint.

The prince and more than 40 others are suing the company over allegations it illegally collected information from journalists and private investigators it hired, with the trial set to begin in January 2025. NGN disputes the allegations.

Judge Timothy Fancourt said there was evidence that “a large number of potentially relevant documents” and “confidential messages” between the prince and the ghostwriter from his autobiography Spare “were destroyed between 2021 and 2023, well after the beginning of this claim.”

“The position is not sufficiently clear about what happened,” the judge said.

He said the prince’s exchanges with writer JR Moehringer on the messaging app Signal could be “related to the parts of Spare in which the illegal collection of information relating to the newspapers was discussed”.

NGN’s legal team accused the duke of “obfuscation”, but Prince Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne said in written submissions that the duke had not discussed the illegal collection of information via text messages or WhatsApp with anyone and that his Signal messages had been “deleted”.

Mr Justice Fancourt ruled that a wider search was needed into Prince Harry’s laptop, text messages and WhatsApp messages to examine exchanges between 2005 and early 2023.

The Duke was also ordered to produce a witness statement explaining how the messages with his ghostwriter JR Moehringer had disappeared.

News Group was awarded two thirds of its costs, but the Duke of Sussex’s legal team is contesting the £132,000 bill, arguing the amount is excessive for a one-day hearing.

The move comes after NGN’s legal team sought an order requiring Harry to disclose any information he had that was relevant to what he knew about alleged illegal behavior before the end of 2013.

NGN had argued that if the Duke knew he had a potential claim before that date, then the case could be dismissed on the grounds that it had been brought too late.

Under legal rules, claims generally must be filed within six years, but many of these cases date back decades.

But the plaintiffs in that case argued that NGN concealed evidence of phone hacking, preventing them from suing sooner.

NGN has already paid hundreds of millions of pounds to victims of the News of the World phone hacking and settled more than 1,300 lawsuits.

The company previously said the Sun took no responsibility and made no admissions regarding the allegations.

Prince Harry’s complaint is part of a series of legal challenges he has brought against parts of the British press.