Duke of Sussex may be forced to settle Sun case over ‘impossible’ legal fees, lawyer says

THE Duke of Sussex might be forced to settle his High Court claim against the publisher of The Sun due to “impossible” legal costs, his lawyer has admitted.

David Sherborne said Prince Harry faced the same predicament as fellow claimant Hugh Grant, who revealed that he had settled with News Group Newspapers (NGN) for an “enormous sum” as he could not risk being saddled with an estimated £10million legal bill.

Grant, along with the Duke and more than 40 others, had sued NGN over alleged unlawful information gathering and invasion of privacy. A trial is scheduled for January 2025. In 2021, actress Sienna Miller settled her case against NGN because of the risk of paying millions in legal fees even if she won.

Mr Sherborne told the court yesterday: “The Duke of Sussex is subject to the same issues that Sienna Miller and Hugh Grant have been subject to, which is that offers are made [which] make it impossible for them to go ahead.”

Mr Grant claimed he was targeted by journalists and private investigators working for The Sun, “including burglaries to order, the breaking and entering of private property in order to obtain private information through bugging, landline tapping, phone hacking.”

However, he explained that he had been forced to settle because the rules of civil litigation meant that if he was awarded damages “even a penny less” than the settlement offer, he would be liable for the legal costs of both sides. “As is common with entirely innocent people, they are offering me an enormous sum of money to keep this matter out of court,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“I don’t want to accept this money or settle. I would love to see all the allegations that they deny tested in court… Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers are very expensive. So even if every allegation is proven in court, I would still be liable for something approaching £10million in costs. I’m afraid I am shying at that fence.”

NGN said that the settlement was “in both parties’ financial interests not to progress to a costly trial”. Despite accepting the settlement, Grant said the money “has a stink”, adding that he would refuse to let it be “hush money.”

He said he would donate it to groups such as the Hacked Off campaign against the tabloid newspaper industry, “to expose the worst excesses of our oligarch-owned press.”

By contrast, the Duke asked the judge in March if he could extend the parameters of his own claim by incorporating allegations dating from 1994 until 2016, rather than the current 1996 until 2011.

NGN has applied for a separate trial to take place ahead of the full trial to determine whether the outstanding claims were brought too late. Anthony Hudson KC, for the publisher, said that despite “high profile” and extensive coverage of the phone hacking scandal, the Duke had not issued proceedings until 2019, 23 years after the earliest wrong alleged in his current claim and eight years after the most recent.

“Accordingly, the primary limitation period of six years has expired, by a significant margin,” he said.

The barrister said that if the issue was addressed ahead of time, it might avoid the need for a full trial, or limit its scope, “saving substantial costs and court time”. He noted that the litigation had already taken up a huge amount of court time, amassing “well over £30million in common costs just up until September 2020.”

Mr Sherborne argued that a second trial would be “pointless” and made “no sense at all”. He told the judge: “This application is plainly tactical.”

An NGN spokesman said: “In some cases, it has made commercial sense for both parties to come to a settlement agreement before trial to bring a resolution to the matter.

“There are a number of disputed claims still going through the civil courts, some of which seek to involve The Sun. The Sun does not accept liability or make any admissions to the allegations. A judge recently ruled that parts of Mr Grant’s claim were out of time and we have reached agreement to settle the remainder of the case. This has been done without admission of liability.”

‘Even if every allegation is proven in court, I would still be liable for something around £10m in costs’