Prince Harry and six other prominent public figures have been ordered to pay £9.5m in an initial payment to the publisher of the Daily Mail after accusing them of unlawful information gathering.
The sum is the first payment the Duke of Sussex and his fellow complainants will be forced to pay to Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), which spent £34m defending the claims before they were comprehensively dismissed in July.
High Court judge Mr Justice Nicklin ruled that the royal and other high-profile figures, including Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Sir Elton John, must make the initial payment and refused to limit the costs the publisher could recover. The final amount they can claim will be decided at a future hearing.
He found the celebrities adopted a “high-risk strategy” and their claims were “speculative and substantially inferential”.
The claimants had alleged ANL carried out or commissioned unlawful activities such as landline tapping, hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars or “blagging” private records.
ANL strongly denied the claims in a high-profile 45-day High Court trial, where Harry and the other celebrity claimants gave evidence.
In a 436-page judgment in July, Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed all claims brought against ANL, which related to 57 stories – most of which were published between 1997 and 2015.
The judge said that none of the group had proven their allegations of unlawful information gathering.
In a statement following the ruling, ANL said the decision was an “overwhelming victory for the Daily Mail and its journalists” and showed every article was legitimately sourced.
The case later returned to the High Court for a two-day hearing over costs, where the court was told ANL’s total costs had spiralled to more than £34.5m, while Harry and other claimants had an insurance policy which only covered £16m.
ANL, which also publishes the Mail on Sunday, had asked for more than £9.9m as an interim payment ahead of future hearings to decide its legal costs in depth. Lawyers for the group of household names, also including David Furnish, Sadie Frost, Liz Hurley and Sir Simon Hughes, had argued the interim payment should be just over £7.9m.
In a ruling handed down by email today, Mr Justice Nicklin told the claimants to pay £9,544,355 by 4pm on 28 August.
He also ruled the final amount they must pay would be decided on an indemnity basis, rather than a standard basis. This means the final sum is not limited by what costs the publishers reasonably incurred.
The judge said the celebrities pursued the litigation in a way that took it “well outside of the norm”, including “exceptional breadth” of the case and the continued pursuit of serious allegations that lacked an adequate evidential foundation.
This included their reliance on a statement from private investigator Gavin Burrows, which he had retracted and insisted was fake.
“The cumulative effect of these matters takes the case well outside the norm. The conduct was unreasonable to a high degree,” the ruling said.
The judge described the litigation as a “high-risk strategy”, adding: “Allegations of the utmost seriousness were advanced before the evidential foundation for many of them had been established, and the case was then pleaded at the widest possible level to obtain disclosure and seek to substantiate the individual claims.”
He said it was “striking that not a single allegation of serious wrongdoing was voluntarily withdrawn” by the claimants, even when they were “unsupported or had ceased to be realistically maintainable”.
The court emphasised that an indemnity costs order is not a “blank cheque” and Mr Justice Nicklin said he regarded Associated’s £35m costs claim as “excessive”. But he declined to impose a cost cap as this would “be too broad-brushed, would risk unfairness, and would be vulnerable to the charge that it was arbitrary”.
Previously, Nicholas Bacon KC, for the group, said in written submissions that it could be “very significant” if the group of seven had to pay ANL’s costs on this stricter basis and could lead to them being without enough insurance cover.
In a statement following the ruling, a spokesperson for ANL said the decision was “another overwhelming victory for the Mail and its journalism”.
“His judgment is a devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors and executives,” the publisher added.
“From well before the trial started, the claimants’ lawyers knew that their main witness had denied making the preposterous allegations on which the claims were based.
“Despite this collapse in evidence to support the extremely serious allegations of ‘abhorrent criminal activity, crimes and terrible and reprehensible covert acts’ by the Mail, they were emblazoned in a lurid press release issued on behalf of Baroness Lawrence, Prince Harry and the other claimants, with the exception of Sir Simon Hughes. The allegations were not withdrawn, and were pursued until the bitter end of the trial.
“This placed a huge burden on the Mail to defend the reputations of its innocent journalists and the paper itself.
“The truth is that these outrageous claims should never have been brought. That they were pursued raises disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession.”
Former MP Sir Simon Hughes said he was disappointed and “surprised” by the ruling not to limit the publisher’s recoverable costs, adding: “I am now taking the time necessary to consider both the substantive and the costs judgment and whether to pursue appeals against decisions in either judgment or both.”
The judgment comes after it was made public on Wednesday that Harry and his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, are moving back to the UK after six years living in California.
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