High Court denies Prince Harry's bid to take down Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan

Prince Harry's attempt to include claims against Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan in his lawsuit has been rejected by London's High Court. 

As reported by Variety, Prince Harry, along with over 40 plaintiffs, is suing Murdoch's News Group Newspapers (NGN) for phone hacking and unlawful news gathering. 

The plaintiffs wanted to amend their lawsuit to add new claims against Murdoch and Morgan, alleging Murdoch knew about illegal activities at his newspapers since 2004. 

NGN strongly disputed these claims.

A judge ruled that adding claims against Murdoch would create a new lawsuit and cannot be included in the current litigation, Variety reports.

Prince Harry was also denied permission to include allegations from before 1996 and after 2011, periods already addressed in other legal proceedings. 

According to Variety, the Duke of Sussex sought to expand his lawsuit to cover articles about his mother, Princess Diana, from the mid-1990s and those from 2016 when he began dating Meghan Markle, claiming NGN's The Sun hired private investigators to target Meghan.

Judge Fancourt allowed some amendments to Prince Harry's claims, including allegations about bugging and accusations against more individuals. 

An NGN representative stated, “At a hearing in March 2024, the Claimants sought to introduce wide-ranging allegations into their pleadings. NGN argued that many of these were irrelevant to the fair and just determination of claims.” 

The court agreed, denying permission to introduce significant portions of the amendments.

Prince Harry's representatives did not respond by press time. The case is scheduled for trial in January 2025.