Prince Harry’s Legal Allies Are Dropping Like Flies Against Rupert Murdoch

The Duke of Sussex is on a lonely truth-seeking crusade and isn’t warring with Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers for a penny—or a pound.

Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, faces the final test of his nerve in his long battle with Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloids over alleged unlawful information gathering by British journalists and private investigators. In the past week, Harry has become far more isolated in his quest to see the top Murdoch executives forced to appear in court to answer for their roles in the hacking scandal that unfolded more than two decades ago.

It was revealed in a London court on Friday that of the 40 claimants originally joined with Harry in the civil action against Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), only two remained to press on with a trial: Harry and a former Labour Party stalwart, Tom Watson. Over the past several weeks, after the Murdoch lawyers suddenly escalated their financial offers, 39 settled for undisclosed sums. This collapse of a united front against the Murdoch papers heightens the gamble Harry is taking. He has frequently stated that he would not settle. But legal experts say that, at best, even if he wins in court, the amount awarded to him would be less than he could have collected by settling. And if he loses, he would have to cover hefty legal costs. In a similar action against another London tabloid, the Daily Mirror, Harry won on 15 of the 33 hacking charges he made and was awarded the relatively modest penalty payment of 140,600 pounds (about $178,000). At the time of the settlement, it was estimated that the Mirror would pay half a million pounds (about $650,000) in legal fees, although the final sum has been estimated to be much higher.

Harry is also isolated in another way. His crusade against the tabloids sets him apart from the rest of the royal family; the king, his father, advised against this battle and his brother, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, agreed, even though tabloids were a constant source of stress for their mother, Princess Diana. Indeed, the Buckingham Palace courtiers, who have a hands-on role in managing royal media coverage, have traditionally favored wrangling the tabloid reporters as best they can rather than ostracizing them, a policy Harry has decried as “sleeping with the devil.”