Prince Harry’s memoir Spare caused quite a stir when it was released last year. The book pulled no punches when it came to exposing Harry’s experiences as a member of the royal family. No one was deemed safe from his pen — especially not brother Prince William, King Charles, or the British tabloid media. Harry has had a longstanding feud with the British tabloid media that only seems to get worse as the years go on, including multiple legal battles. And now, the British courts are now bringing Harry’s drafts of Spare into the fight.
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Prince Harry is involved in yet another lawsuit.
Harry is one of dozens who are suing News Group Newspapers, or NGN, publishers of The Sun, over claims of invasion of privacy by their journalists and investigators between 1994 and 2016. But now NGN is accusing Harry of destroying documents and messages regarding Spare, troubling the British court.
The tabloids are fighting back.
Anthony Hudson, the attorney representing NGN, told the court that Harry deleted drafts of Spare. Additionally, they claim that he also deleted messages between him and J.R. Moehringer, the book’s ghostwriter.
Justice Fancourt said that he’s found “troubling evidence that a large number of potentially relevant documents and confidential messages between the Duke and the ghostwriter of Spare were destroyed sometime between 2021 and 2023, well after this claim was underway,” The Telegraph reported.
The judge is ordering that Harry explain why the materials are missing.
The judge said he found the lack of documentation “rather remarkable,” adding that it was “not transparently clear about what happened." He also asked the Duke of Sussex, who wasn’t in court that day, to provide a witness statement that explains “what happened to the messages between himself and his ghostwriter and whether any attempts were made to retrieve them.”
Harry's lawyer is clapping back at the claims.
Prince Harry’s lawyer, David Sherborne, accused NGN of a “transparent, old-fashioned fishing expedition,” according to documents obtained by People. “NGN's tactical and sluggish approach to disclosure wholly undermines the deliberately sensational assertion that [the Duke of Sussex] has not properly carried out the disclosure exercise,” he said.
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Harry's legal team claims he's already done everything he can to provide the necessary evidence.
Sherborne went on to call out the “untrue” claims, saying, “In fact, the Claimant has already made clear that he has conducted extensive searches, going above and beyond his obligations.”
According to Sherborne, the measures taken include a physical search of Harry’s home in California, confirmations that old email addresses are no longer accessible, and reaching out to the “Royal Household” to ask about relevant documents.
Some of the cases in the NGN lawsuit will likely go to trial in 2025, but at this point, it's not clear what Harry's next step will be.
