Prince Harry has lost his battle against the UK newspaper, the Sun.
A judge threw out the Duke of Sussex’s phone hacking case against the publication’s parent publisher, News Group Newspapers (NGN), on Thursday.
Justice Timothy Fancourt has also discharged Harry’s claim that there is a “secret agreement” between Buckingham Palace and the media.
However, the court has allowed Harry, 38, to take the Sun to trial and to continue suing them, alleging illegal practices to obtain information against him.
The case is set to hit the UK’s High Court in January 2024.
The Sun is part of NewsCorp, which is the parent company of The New York Post.
According to the Associated Press, the judge said that the Invictus Games founder was aware of the phone hacking issue earlier and should have brought it up sooner to the court.
News Group Newspapers asserted that the suit should be canceled because the allegations had arisen following a six-year maximum to do so concluded.
“There is no evidence currently before me that the Duke knew before the (deadline to file a suit) that NGN had done anything other than hack his mobile phone (at the News of the World),” Fancourt said.
“Knowing or being on notice of a worthwhile claim for voicemail interception does not of itself amount to knowledge or notice of a worthwhile claim for other forms of [unlawful information gathering],” he continued.
A representative for News Group Newspapers stated that Fancourt’s decision was a “significant victory” that “substantially reduces the scope of [Harry’s] legal claim.”
Lawyers for Harry had testified that he was unable to bring up his case in the past because of a “secret agreement” between the royal family and the press.
This so-called pact between the royals and the newspapers was allegedly sanctioned by the late Queen Elizabeth, who died in September 2023.
The deal would have barred any members of the royal family from bringing forward future lawsuits against the media.
However, NGN contested that any secret deal even existed and that Harry never unveiled evidence of any sort of agreement.
Harry stated that the reasoning behind the covert arrangement was to keep the royal family away from the witness stand.
The father of two traveled across the pond to London last month to appear at High Court where he testified against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).
He is also suing them over supposed unlawful information gathering. He first initiated the claim in 2019 and said that his phone voicemails had been hacked.