By Sheila Mckenzie-
Prince Harry is asking for £441,000 in damages for 33 newspaper articles published by Mirror Group Newspapers which he alleges breached his privacy.
Prince Harry’s lawyers have demanded up to £30,000 each for stories about his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy and his drug taking.
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Harry had highlighted his former South African born girlfriend as one of his key examples of instances were the press had hacked their respective telephone calls, stating how they released intimate details on some occasions only they knew. He said he once found a bug in Davy’s car.
The highest damages application from Prince Harry’s lawyers is for a 2005 article on the front page in the Daily Mirror which reported the prince’s then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy was to “dump him”.
A barrister for Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) said this week the Duke of Sussex was only entitled to £500 for a private investigator’s attempt to get personal details about him.
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Another article they are claiming damages for was headlined “Chelsy Is Not Happy”.
His lawyers said the story included photos of Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy taken at a distance and went into detail about the state of their relationship.
They told The High Court that highly specific details of telephone contact between the couple were included.
Lawyers alleged a private investigator and “flight and call data blagger” in South Africa assisted with details for the story.
A court document stated: “The article came at a difficult and vulnerable time for the Duke of Sussex, where details of his mistakes were played out so publicly.”
“Whilst the Duke of Sussex was remorseful for his actions, the article added to his embarrassment by revealing the impact on his personal relationship with Ms Davy, with humiliating details of private arguments between the couple and added to his sense of distrust and paranoia of those around him.”
The second highest award claimed, £25,000, relates to a story in the Sunday People in 2003.
It reported a disagreement between Prince Harry and the Prince of Wales over whether to meet Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell who had angered the brothers by selling secrets about their mother.
Prince Harry’s lawyers said the article contained “private and sensitive information” about the disagreement.
He insisted that the language used mirrors voicemail messages he would have left for Prince William at the time suggesting he was the victim of phone hacking.
Prince Harry is also claiming £20,000 for a Daily Mirror story in 2002 suggesting he had hosted parties where he and friends had taken cocaine and ecstasy.
The document linked the story to a series of payments to a tracing agency the claimants said was involved in unlawful information gathering at a time when Prince Harry was at Eton, which had a zero-tolerance drugs policy.
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