I’ve always maintained that these greedy bastards saw Sienna Miller stand in front of the courthouse in December 2021 and announce a settlement which was rumoured to be in the tens of millions for which Sienna had proof of ANL egregious breach of her privacy, and they thought I want me some of that free money. The Levinson inquiry was supposed to have addressed those breaches, end of. Remember those blagging etc was very early cell phone technology, almost 30 years ago. The most famous breaches of privacy course were the Charles and Camilla tampon tapes, and Diana squidgy tape which was not nearly as scandalous. I’m not saying the Mail was involved in those, I don’t know who was. Again the Levinson enquire came about and wrists were smacked and fined and there were promises to do better. Technology then evolved at a rapid pace to where we are today.
People with more knowledge than me have said that this was a blatant attempt to reopen the findings of the Levinson enquiry or create another one, and clamp down on the press and what they could and could not report on. The problem with that is the newspapers make their living off the rich and famous, and now here was this group of powerful people, led by a discontented Prince trying to rewrite wrongs that were addressed previously. There should have been a statute of limitations on these matters (or perhaps there were nearing a deadline for filing claims?). That’s why ANL came with hard receipts. Harry and co only had to prove that 51% of each claim was true with evidence and he couldn’t manage that. Who knows? Perhaps if Harry and Meghan were not involved there would have been a different outcome. But the driver in this was greed and a play for power. Pure and simple. And I’m glad they got shut down. It was very satisfying to witness.
I agree with you. The matter was settled, and then this group came along and tried to open it up again and create more restrictions on the press. I think some of them were greedy, and perhaps some were motivated by a sense of having their privacy invaded as well, and none of them had anything in the way of hard evidence to support their claims. Therefore they lost, and rightly so in my opinion. The judge warned them repeatedly that they had not submitted evidence to support their case, and they ignored him, and this is the result.
The claims were beyond the statute of limitations, and I believe one of the reasons for the court case was to show a reason why the claims should be allowed, which they also failed to do (e.g. they had to prove that they were not aware of the illegal information gathering until after the time limit had passed, and therefore they could not file within the time limit).
For me, this case is an example of why you should always have evidence to back up your claims when you go to court (I still remember Harry in an earlier case telling the court that it was their job to find the evidence, not his).
