Prince Harry breaks silence after losing High Court case against Daily Mail publisher

Three months after a lengthy trial concluded, a verdict has been handed down in the Duke of Sussex’s High Court case against the Daily Mail publisher, as he alleged they gathered information unlawfully

Prince Harry has lost his High Court case against Associated Newspapers Limited.

The Duke of Sussex, Sir Elton John and others’ claims over alleged unlawful information gathering by Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers have been dismissed by a High Court judge.

Mr Justice Nicklin said in his ruling that he accepted the evidence given by the Duke of Sussex at trial, with Harry in court in London in January. In a 436-page ruling, the judge said: “In assessing Prince Harry’s evidence overall, it was apparent that he wished the court to understand the personal impact of the matters in issue.

“At times, this led him beyond giving factual evidence into advancing arguments on the issues, and exchanges followed with Mr White KC (Antony White KC, for Associated) in that vein. As I indicated to Prince Harry at the time, that is not uncommon: many litigants feel a strong instinct to argue their case themselves.

“However, when giving evidence, that is not a burden they are required to carry. The responsibility for advancing the party’s case rests with the advocate. Overall, this did not affect the quality of Prince Harry’s evidence, which I accept. As with each of the claimants, Prince Harry has limited evidence to give on the contentious matters in dispute.”

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Prince Harry attended the 14th Invictus Games Foundation Conversation: From Policy to Practice this afternoon, to celebrate one year until the Birmingham 2027 games(Image: AFP via Getty Images)

In his written judgment, Mr Justice Nicklin discussed each of the articles in the now-dismissed claims brought by Harry and the other household names. Discussing one of the duke’s articles, about Harry being named as the godfather to the child of his former nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, Mr Justice Nicklin said: “The burden is on Prince Harry to prove that the information he relies upon in this article was obtained by unlawful means carried out or commissioned on Associated’s behalf.

“The allegation, advanced at trial, was that it was obtained by voicemail interception. I am not satisfied that this has been established. The pleaded case does not particularise any unlawful act used to obtain the information in this article.”

The judge continued: “More importantly, the evidence available for this article does not provide a sufficient foundation to conclude that voicemail interception, or any other unlawful act, occurred to obtain the relevant information. There is no documentary evidence for this article pointing to or suggesting voicemail interception.”

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Prince Harry arrived at Chatham House for an Invictus Games event just before the ruling(Image: AFP via Getty Images)

He added: “Prince Harry’s evidence is that only a very close circle would have known these matters and that the Palace press office would not have known because Prince Charles had not yet been notified.

“That evidence is important, and I take it into account. But it does not, without more, establish that the information was obtained through voicemail interception, still less that it was obtained by, or as the product of, an unlawful act carried out or commissioned on Associated’s behalf.”

A group of household names, including Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Sir Elton John and David Furnish, also alleged acts including voicemail interception, landline tapping and obtaining information by deception, also known as “blagging”, were carried out by private investigators, freelance journalists and staff at Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).

Following the judgment, ANL’s editor in chief Mr Paul Dacre described the ruling as “a momentous victory for the Mail” and “an overwhelming vindication of our journalism”. Mr Dacre later said: “The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession.”

In a statement following the High Court’s ruling, Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers said: “Associated Newspapers welcomes today’s judgment, which is an overwhelming victory for the Daily Mail and its journalists, and for a free press generally.

“Mr Justice Nicklin today cleared the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, and dismissed every single one of the 97 allegations made by the claimants.

“In every case, the judge accepted the honesty of our journalists’ evidence on how they sourced their stories. This is a magnificent vindication of the Daily Mail’s journalism.

“For some of the most outrageous allegations made when the case was launched in a blaze of publicity four years ago – placing bugs in people’s cars and homes, listening to calls as they were made and illicitly accessing bank accounts – no credible evidence was ever presented.

“As we said at the time, these allegations were ‘lurid’ and ‘preposterous’, and were a fishing expedition by the claimants and their legal teams in a politically motivated campaign to muzzle the free press.

“The reputations of our decent and hard-working journalists were terribly impugned, and today they have been exonerated.

“As the judgment clearly shows, every single article was legitimately sourced.

“Associated Newspapers thanks Mr Justice Nicklin for the patience and wisdom he has displayed throughout this misguided legal action, which has wasted so much valuable court time and more than £50 million in legal costs.

“We will look to resolve outstanding issues, including the recovery of the costs we have incurred while defending ourselves against this egregious litigation.”

Harry appeared in court in January to give evidence against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL). The Duke was present in London’s Royal Courts of Justice over a few days, in which he became emotional multiple times while recounting “trauma” from intimate details of his and Meghan Markle’s lives being made public.

Harry appeared on the verge of tears as he spoke, becoming upset as he mentioned his wife, the Duchess of Sussex. He said, voice faltering, and appearing on the verge of tears: “They continue to come after me, they have made my wife’s life an absolute misery, my Lord.”

Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne told the court the news articles, written between 2001 and 2013 “focus primarily and in a highly intrusive and damaging way, on the relationships which he formed, or rather tried to form, during those years prior to meeting his now wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.”

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Prince Harry arriving at the Royal Courts of Justice in January (Image: Getty Images)

Sherborne also defended the Duke’s decision to take legal action against the publisher, as he told the court: “In his witness statement for the trial, the Duke of Sussex speaks of the impact which this has had on him – the distress, the paranoia and the other feelings that it generated.

“But given what we’ve seen, is it any wonder that he feels that way, or as he explains, that he feels he has endured a sustained campaign of attacks against him for having had the temerity to stand up to Associated in the way that he has so publicly done.”

The court heard how Harry felt he had “endured a sustained campaign of attacks against him” from the publisher, with the “highly intrusive” acts prompting feelings of “distress and paranoia”.

Throughout the 11-week trial earlier this year, the High Court in London heard claims brought by a group – which also includes Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Liz Hurley, Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish – against ANL of unlawful information-gathering.

These include allegations of voicemail interception, landline tapping and obtaining information by deception – also known as “blagging”, carried out by private investigators, freelance journalists and ANL staff.

Throughout the trial, ANL strongly denied the claims and defended the case, saying it “has established a complete defence to all parts of the claims on the merits” and that the cases have been brought too late. The verdict comes as Harry kicks off several days of engagements in the UK, ahead of a major Invictus Games event in Birmingham on Friday.

The following statement comes from Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Baroness Doreen Lawrence. It reads: “We came to Court seeking justice and accountability. But we have received neither. This judgment represents a complete reversal of the position which previous Judges have taken in relation to the hacking claims successfully brought against both News Group Newspapers and Mirror Group Newspapers (who were represented by, at the time, the Judge who made this decision). Generic findings about various private investigators that were held by the Courts in these parallel claims to have carried out unlawful activity at the very same time in relation to similar stories and well-known individuals have been wholly ignored. The fact that this Court has chosen to dismiss them represents an inconsistency which is hard to understand or reconcile with common sense, or the evidence heard in the court room itself.”It is a complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected. However, the lengths to which the Court has gone to exonerate the Mail is as shocking as it is totally unwarranted.”When the Court says there is not sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, despite the documents showing otherwise, then one does wonder how justice was ever going to be achieved. One need not look past when a private investigator the Mail used actually admitted on tape to having unlawfully blagged Baroness Lawrence, or when a journalist recorded the name of the private investigators she used to find out about highly sensitive medical information (that even the Mail was too worried to publish) or when another private investigator emailed one of the journalists with the actual British Airways seat number and ticketing details for a young girl simply visiting her boyfriend in return for payment.”It feels here like one rule for the newspapers and another for the claimants. While the Claimants presented evidence, Mail journalists simply gave denials, and the Court chose uncritically to believe them, even in the face of inconsistencies, contradictions and blatant untruths that were obvious to neutral observers in Court when compared to the documents.”We presented to the Court evidence which we believed was compelling at the time and and remains so now. We would like to thank our legal team for all their hard work and all the witnesses who were brave enough to came forward in the pursuit of justice.”