Prince Harry settles a case against a UK tabloid publisher that hacked his phone

abcnews.go.com:

Harry reached a settlement with a tabloid publisher that invaded his privacy.

LONDON — LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry said Friday that his “mission” to rein in the British media continues, after he accepted costs and damages from a tabloid publisher that invaded his privacy with phone hacking and other illegal snooping.

Harry's attorney, David Sherborne, said at a court hearing that Mirror Group Newspapers had agreed to pay all of the prince's legal costs, plus “substantial” damages, and would make an interim payment of 400,000 pounds ($505,000) within 14 days. The final tab will be assessed later.

Harry said he had been vindicated, and vowed: “Our mission continues.”

“We have uncovered and proved the shockingly dishonest way in which the Mirror acted for so many years, and then sought to conceal the truth,” the 39-year-old royal said in a statement read outside the High Court in London by his lawyer.

Harry was awarded 140,000 pounds ($177,000) in damages in December, after a judge found that phone hacking was “widespread and habitual” at Mirror Group Newspapers in the late 1990s, went on for more than a decade and that executives at the papers covered it up. Judge Timothy Fancourt found that Harry’s phone was hacked “to a modest extent.”

The settlement avoids new trials over 115 more tabloid articles that Harry says were the product of hacking or other intrusions.

Mirror Group said in a statement that it was «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.”

Harry’s case against the publisher of the Daily Mirror is one of several that he has launched in a campaign against the British media, which he