A 'dishonest' and 'improper' proposal was made to help a former justice minister overcome the argument that his part in Prince Harry's claim against the publisher of the Daily Mail was time-barred, the judge in the case found yesterday.
Sir Simon Hughes, a Liberal Democrat who served in the coalition government, was one of seven claimants including the Duke of Sussex whose claims against Associated Newspapers for 'unlawful information gathering' were dismissed after an 11-week trial. Ruling in Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon & Ors v Associated Newspapers, Mr Justice Nicklin found that the claimants had failed to establish that any of 57 articles published between 1997 and 2011 had been based on phone-hacking or other illegal practices.
The 436-page judgment also deals with allegations that a 'camouflage' scheme was concocted to prevent Hughes' claim being struck out under the Limitation Act 1980. To avoid the six-year time-bar, the judgment found, Hughes' team attempted to rely on the act's provision that the period of limitation does not run until the claimant has discovered a fraud or concealment 'or could with reasonable diligence have discovered it'.
This would require Hughes to show he became aware that he had a basis for action only after October 2016 - six years before the claim was filed. According to the judgment, a member of Hughes' research team, the former MP and press reform campaigner Dr Evan Harris, proposed this be done in 2019 through articles in the online newspaper Byline Times on past admissions by a former News of the World journalist.
However the judge concluded that Hughes would have known about these admissions in April 2016. He found that Harris had been aware of the limitation difficulty and that his proposal 'was an improper attempt to blunt a limitation argument by obscuring the earlier availability of the facts'. While finding the 'limitation camouflage scheme' proved, the judge did not find that Hughes had acted dishonestly. The instances where Hughes' recollection of events 'is not consistent with the contemporaneous documentary record' merely reflect 'the well-recognised fallibility of memory over time', Nicklin said.
Explaining his reasons for dealing with a matter that did not need to be decided, the judge said serious allegations had been pursued at trial. 'It would be unsatisfactory, if they can properly be addressed, to leave such actions entirely unresolved.'
The judge set a further hearing date on 29-30 July at which the court 'will resolve any matters of dispute'. Costs budgets totalling £8.53 million were approved at a case management conference last year. However both sides' costs are widely estimated to exceed £50m.
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