The long-awaited trial in Prince Harry’s lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloids for unlawful gathering of information opened on Tuesday. But it was immediately adjourned and lawyers later said that the two sides were engaged in a last-minute settlement negotiation.
It was a trademark move for Mr. Murdoch and his companies, which have avoided many courtroom showdowns, on phone hacking charges and other allegations, by offering expensive settlements.
This time, a lawyer for Harry petitioned the judge for an hour, before asking for yet another delay, until 2 p.m. London time, and then for two more hours, as the lawyers conferred with their clients in faraway time zones. Both sides pleaded with the judge not to force them to begin making arguments, saying that would jeopardize a resolution that could avert weeks of costly litigation.
During a day of frantic filibustering, the lawyers huddled in the hallways of the High Court, which swarmed with journalists gathered to cover a trial that was expected to be the last major legal reckoning for victims of the phone hacking scandal that tarnished Britain’s news media more than a decade ago.
If Harry accepts a settlement, it would spare him heavy financial risk. Under English law, Harry would be required to pay the legal costs of both sides — which could run into the tens of millions of dollars — if the court does not award him an amount commensurate with what News Group Newspapers had offered him in a settlement.
For News Group, it would avert weeks of damaging testimony about phone hacking and other unlawful methods used by its journalists to ferret out information about Harry and other prominent figures. News Group, which denies the accusations, has settled similar claims with hundreds of other plaintiffs over the years.
The judge in the case, Timothy Fancourt, showed mounting irritation on Tuesday with the requests by Harry’s lead lawyer, David Sherborne, for more time. Justice Fancourt said he understood that “there is a settlement dynamic at play, and that dynamic may change from time to time.” But he told lawyers for both sides that the months leading up to the trial had given them “ample time” to resolve their differences.
The lead lawyer for News Group, Anthony Hudson, insisted that the two sides were “very close,” and that a settlement would avoid “a very substantial sum” in additional legal costs if the trial went ahead. He said the negotiation had been complicated by the fact that some of the parties were in different time zones. Prince Harry lives in Montecito, Calif., while Mr. Murdoch has multiple residences outside Britain.
Mr. Hudson threatened to appeal the judge’s refusal to grant more time to the Court of Appeals. Justice Fancourt then adjourned the court until Wednesday morning, effectively granting the lawyers the time they wanted.
There are powerful incentives for both sides to reach an accommodation.
Lawyers for Harry have planned to lay out not just a pattern of unlawful behavior, but also what they describe as a systematic scheme to delete emails to cover up the hacking. They questioned why News Group had no plans to call those they claim were most responsible for the coverup: Mr. Murdoch’s younger son, James; Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News U.K.; and Will Lewis, a former senior executive at the company who is now the publisher of The Washington Post. All three have denied wrongdoing.
Harry, who was far from the courtroom on Tuesday, has said he expected his legal costs to dwarf any settlement he would receive from the court. But because of his resources and public profile as the younger son of King Charles III, he said he had a rare chance to hold the tabloids to account for years of predatory behavior. He has been expected to take the stand in late February.
“One of the main reasons for seeing this through is accountability because I am the last person that can actually achieve that,” Harry said last month in an interview at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit.
News Group Newspapers did not comment on settlement negotiations. But in a statement last week, the company said “it has made commercial sense” to agree on financial terms with other people who filed suits against The Sun, one of two tabloids owned by Mr. Murdoch, without admitting liability.
Mr. Murdoch closed his other tabloid, The News of the World, in 2011 after the phone hacking charges erupted into a national scandal. He issued a contrite apology for the conduct of The News of the World, but the company has never admitted wrongdoing by editors and reporters at The Sun.
Mr. Murdoch, 93, has not hesitated to make sizable settlements to avoid embarrassing disclosures in court. In April 2023, Fox News paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit by a voting machine company, Dominion Voting Systems, over its promotion of disinformation about the 2020 election that Dominion claimed had harmed the company.
Harry’s testimony in London would come after the court completes what the judge blandly calls the “generic case.” In that phase, lawyers for Harry and another plaintiff, Tom Watson, a former deputy leader of the Labour Party, were planning to establish widespread and deeply rooted misconduct by editors and reporters at The Sun, as well as efforts to purge incriminating emails.
News Group has settled with all but two of the original plaintiffs in this case, including the actor Hugh Grant, as well as in cases involving 1,300 other hacking claims. Mr. Grant said in April that he had felt forced to settle, because “even if every allegation is proven in court, I would still be liable for something approaching 10 million pounds in costs. I’m afraid I am shying at that fence.”
Lawyers for Harry, who is also known as the Duke of Sussex, and Mr. Watson, who is a member of the House of Lords, wrote in a summary of their filing, “To put it bluntly, this case is not about money for the duke and Lord Watson.”
“They want findings and accountability in relation to what was done to them, as well as what was done more generally” by News Group and its senior executives “to thousands of victims,” the lawyers wrote.