Prince Harry has settled the remaining claims in his phone hacking lawsuit against British tabloid publisher Mirror Group Newspapers, per the BBC.
The settlement will amount to 400,000 pounds, or $504,000 — but the duke claims it won’t end his long-running war against the British media.
“We have uncovered and proved the shockingly dishonest way in which the Mirror acted for so many years,” Harry said in a statement read outside London’s High Court by his lawyer, David Sherborne, per the BBC. Harry vowed to continue his “mission” of holding British tabloids accountable and said he will “continue to see it through to the end.”
After the settlement was announced, a spokesman for Mirror Group Newspapers issued this statement, per The Washington Post: “We are pleased to have reached this agreement, which gives our business further clarity to move forward from events that took place many years ago and for which we have apologized.”
Two months ago, a high court judge partially ruled in Harry’s favor, citing evidence of “widespread and habitual” illegal news gathering methods by Mirror Newsgroups between 2003 and 2009, as the Deseret News previously reported.
Alongside Harry, more than 100 public figures accused the company of phone hacking and unlawful news gathering methods, per Reuters. They alleged that reporters obtained personal information by hiring private investigators to trick people into sharing personal information such as medical records and by illegally accessing voicemails.
In his witness statement, Harry revealed how articles from Mirror Group Newspapers published intimate details about his life, which he said created “unnecessary stress and strain” in his romantic relationships and “bouts of depression and paranoia.”
Piers Morgan — former editor of the Daily Mirror and outspoken critic of Harry — swiped at the duke via social media on Friday, tweeting: “I totally agree with Prince Harry that ruthless intrusion into the private lives of the Royal Family for financial gain is utterly reprehensible… and I hope he stops doing it.”
Harry had alleged in his Friday statement that Morgan “knew perfectly well what was going on” and his “contempt for the court’s ruling and his continued attacks ever since demonstrate why it was so important to obtain a clear and detailed judgment,” per The New York Times.
Morgan continues to deny involvement in the privacy violations. Following the high court’s December ruling, Morgan claimed he “never hacked a phone or told anyone else to hack a phone,” adding that Harry “wouldn’t know truth if it slapped him in his California-tanned face,” per The Washington Post.
“The judgment finds there is just one article relating to the prince published in the Daily Mirror during my entire nine-year tenure as editor that he thinks may have involved some unlawful information gathering,” Morgan, who edited the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004, said about the December ruling, per NBC News.
“To be clear, I had then, and still have, zero knowledge of how that particular story was gathered. All these other claims against the Daily Mirror under my leadership were rejected,” Morgan said.
Harry remains involved in other ongoing lawsuits, including one against the publisher of The Sun.