Huge financial stakes are involved as Prince Harry heads back to court this week for the final phase of a long-running legal battle aimed at curbing the practices of Britain’s tabloid press. Proceedings begin on Monday and mark the third and concluding chapter in his case against the publisher of the Daily Mail.

Harry is leading a group of well-known claimants who accuse Associated Newspapers Ltd of repeatedly breaching their privacy through unlawful newsgathering methods used to generate sensational stories. Alongside Harry, the list of plaintiffs includes Elton John, actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, among others.

The group alleges that the publisher employed private investigators to plant listening devices, access confidential records and intercept phone calls. Associated Newspapers has firmly rejected the claims, dismissing them as absurd.

The trial, being heard at the High Court of Justice, is expected to run for about nine weeks. It will see Harry return to the witness box for the second time since 2023, when he became the first senior royal in more than a century to testify in court.

This case is one of several stemming from the wider phone-hacking scandal that came to light in the early 2000s, when journalists were found to have illegally accessed voicemail messages for years. Harry secured a major victory in 2023 when a court ruled that the publishers of the Daily Mirror had engaged in “widespread and habitual” phone hacking. A year later, a UK tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch issued a rare public apology and agreed to pay significant damages to settle another lawsuit brought by Harry.

For the Duke of Sussex, the fight with the press is deeply personal. He has long blamed intrusive media coverage for contributing to the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi. He has also spoken about relentless media scrutiny of his wife, Meghan, which he says played a key role in their decision to step away from royal duties and relocate to the United States in 2020.

The trial unfolds as Harry continues to navigate strained family ties following his move to America and the publication of his 2023 memoir, Spare, along with candid revelations in a Netflix series. Relations with his father, King Charles III, appeared to soften slightly after a brief meeting last autumn, but another reunion during this visit seems unlikely. The king is due to be in Scotland as the trial begins, and Harry is expected to remain in the UK only for the opening stages and his early testimony.

The lawsuit against the Mail, first filed in 2022, has already seen several heated preliminary hearings. Lawyers for the publisher had argued that many of the claims were time-barred, dating back as far as 1993. However, Judge Matthew Nicklin ruled that the cases had a real chance of success, saying the defence had failed to deliver a decisive blow to end the proceedings.

In the same decision, the judge initially barred the claimants from relying on certain documents that allegedly showed payments to private investigators, as those records had been disclosed confidentially to a public inquiry. Harry’s legal team later obtained clearance from UK authorities to use the material.

Complicating matters further, a private investigator whose sworn statement supported the celebrities’ claims has since submitted another affidavit denying he ever carried out unlawful surveillance on them. During earlier hearings, lawyer David Sherborne said his clients only became aware they were targets of phone hacking in 2021, when investigators came forward to admit wrongdoing. One such investigator claimed he carried out hundreds of jobs for the Mail in the early 2000s and said the claimants were among those targeted, before later retracting that assertion.

How the court will weigh these conflicting accounts remains uncertain. Other claimants in the case include anti-racism campaigner Doreen Lawrence and former politician Simon Hughes, adding further weight to a trial that could have far-reaching implications for Britain’s media landscape.