Prince Harry poses a new existential threat to Rupert Murdoch's media empire

Fox Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch faces another potentially costly threat from Prince Harry.

The media conglomerate just agreed to a $787.5 million payout to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over its 2020 election lies, but some observers believe the company faces an existential threat from the lengthy court battle over phone hacking by Murdoch's tabloids in the U.K., reported The Daily Beast.

“News Group Newspapers (NGN) cannot allow some of those documents to see the light of day” said one person familiar with the case.

Harry's legal team has targeted Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch’s top newspaper executive in the U.K. who was acquitted a decade ago on a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in a criminal case related to the hacks. A source familiar with the case said lawyers have discovered new evidence that the hacking continued under her leadership.

"She’s exposed and what’s strange is that she’s running this litigation," the source said. "It’s unusual for a company to have someone with an interest having a role in deciding the legal strategy. She’s got a conflict of interest. Is it right for a company and its shareholders to allow someone with a conflict of interest to decide how a case is run?”

The hacking scandal killed off News of the World, which Brooks had edited from 2000 to 2003, but another Murdoch-owned tabloid that she had edited from 2003 to 2009, The Sun, continues to pay ruinous legal fees related to the case -- although the victims have been forbidden to say just how much the media company had agreed to pay them in settlements.

Murdoch reportedly expects to pay $1.25 billion to settle those complaints -- and to keep the true extent of the hacking from being revealed -- but a person familiar with the case says some of the new evidence found in discovery includes extensive revelations that Murdoch journalists colluded with police.

Prince Harry, however, is refusing to settle his case, and NGN lawyers are desperately fighting to keep it from going forward by arguing that a statute of limitations should apply.

"Now is the appropriate time to ensure that any intended claims are brought within a reasonable time and that the slow drip-feed of the evidence," they argued at a hearing last year, "which, on the claimants’ approach could last many more years, possibly another decade — is brought to a conclusion.”