Prince Harry settles lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s Sun tabloid

LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry settled his privacy invasion lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. tabloids as his trial was about to begin, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The announcement in London’s High Court came despite the Duke of Sussex’s vow that he was the one person who could hold the publishers of The Sun and now-defunct News of the World accountable at trial for unlawfully snooping on him, other famous figures and average citizens in the news because of tragedies.

Under English court rules, though, he faced a potentially astronomical legal bill even if he won and may have ultimately decided — as hundreds of other claimants have — that he couldn’t risk the cost.

“One of the main reasons for seeing this through is accountability, because I’m the last person that can actually achieve that,” he told The New York Times Dealbook Summit in December when he said he wouldn’t settle.

The deal means that Harry will not be able to seek a court ruling validating his allegations that News Group Newspapers’ journalists went to illegal extremes to dig up dirt on his life and that executives at the company helped cover up the bad acts.

Harry, 40, the younger son of King Charles III, and one other man were the only two remaining claimants out of more than 1,300 others who had settled lawsuits against News Group Newspapers over allegations their phones were hacked and investigators unlawfully intruded in their lives.

In all the cases that have been brought against the publisher since a widespread phone hacking scandal forced Murdoch to close News of the World in 2011, Harry’s case got the closest to trial.