Prince Harry and six other household names have lost their high-profile case against the publisher of the Daily Mail.
During a 11-week trial, the group, which included Sir Elton John and Baroness Doreen Lawrence,” alleged unlawful information gathering by Asscoiated Newspaper Limited (ANL), from landline tapping to obtaining information through deception, which, they said, had left them feeling “violation”, “profound betrayal” and “shock and horror”.
But on Tuesday, their claims, strongly denied by ANL, were dismissed in a High Court ruling.
In a 436-page written judgment, Mr Justice Nicklin said he accepted the limited evidence given by the Duke of Sussex at trial in January. However, he ruled that neither Harry nor the other claimants had proven the allegations of unlawful information gathering.
ANL described the dismissal of all of the 97 allegations made by the claimants as “magnificent vindication of the Daily Mail’s journalism”.
Here, The Independent looks at the case by numbers:
436-page written judgment
In his decision on Tuesday, judge Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed all of the claims, ruling that none of the group of seven had proven the allegations of unlawful information gathering.
He said in the ruling that it was clear Harry “wished the court to understand the personal impact of the matters in issue” during his evidence in January.
The judge later said that it was up to the group of claimants to prove the allegations of unlawful information gathering.
He said: “Whilst the standard of proof remains the balance of probabilities, the more serious, and inherently less probable, the allegation, the more cogent the evidence required to prove it.”
Mr Justice Nicklin added later: “In substance, the claimants’ case invites the court to conclude that, because the information was private and because Associated [ANL] cannot positively explain how it was sourced, the article must have been unlawfully sourced.
“That is not a permissible approach.”
Four years, a 45-day trial: Wait for judgment after claim papers were first served
October, 2022 was when the claim form was first filed by the seven claimants against ANL, before, almost four years later, the trial started at the Royal Courts of Justice on 19 January. It lasted 45 days until 31 March, when closing arguments from all parties were complete.
The judgment came on 7 July this year, 1,370 days after the claim forms were first filed on 6 October.
Seven claimants: Harry among household names in group claim
During an 11-week trial, the High Court in London heard claims brought by the group against ANL of unlawful information gathering. The rest of the group are Sir Elton’s husband David Furnish, Liz Hurley, Sadie Frost and Sir Simon Hughes.
Lady Lawrence claimed the Daily Mail was “pretending” to support her in getting justice for her son Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack in 1993. Her lawyers claim she was “extensively targeted” by private investigators to obtain information, including through corrupt payments to police.
Sir Elton and Mr Furnish alleged 10 articles about them were based on unlawful information gathering, including unlawfully obtained medical information and landline tapping. The couple claimed their son Zachary’s birth certificate was stolen before they received a copy.
Ms Frost claimed that information behind some articles about her had been “hacked from my voicemails”, as they “were word for word” from her messages.
Ms Hurley accused the Daily Mail publisher of stealing her medical records while she was pregnant with her son.
ANL denied the allegations.
14 articles: Harry’s case hinged on stories published between 2001 and 2013
The Duke of Sussex claimed 14 articles published by ANL were based on unlawful information gathering. The stories, his lawyers said, were written between 2001 and 2013, and “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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The articles included one on the decision to name the Duke of Sussex as the godfather to the child of Tiggy Legge-Bourke – his former nanny. According to barrister David Sherborne’s written submissions, only three people were aware of the decision prior to the article being written by Mail on Sunday journalist Katie Nicholl, with nobody in the wider family, including the now King, being informed. Mr Sherborne said there is “no plausibly legitimate source for the information”. ANL said the article was “entirely sourced from legitimate sources”.
Another story was on Harry’s reported relationship with TV presenter Natalie Pinkham. Mr Sherborne said the information reported by Ms Nicholl was only known to an “intimate circle of friends”, and it was “not credible” that she obtained it from a club promoter or a freelance journalist. ANL said the journalist “had several sources who knew both Ms Pinkham and the Duke of Sussex well at the time”.
One story was on Harry’s relationship with his first serious girlfriend, Laura Gerard-Leigh, and their “intentions and habits as a couple”. Harry alleged it was “extraordinary” that the information made its way into the press because of the “privacy he had attached to it and the ‘tiny’ circle of friends who knew”. ANL said the story, written by Ms Nicholl and freelance journalist Andy Buckwell, was partly based on photographs taken of the pair with friends at the Badminton Horse Trials.
Two hours: Harry faced questions in court
As the Duke of Sussex took to the witness stand, laughter rippled through the courtroom when he admitted not being able to remember how he was referred to the last time he was in court – but by the end of the session, Harry was close to tears.
Answering questions from barrister David Sherborne, for the group suing ANL, Harry said: “They continue to come after me, they have made my wife’s life an absolute misery, my Lord.”
Dressed in a dark suit and striped tie, Harry spent around two hours in the witness box, swearing an oath on the Bible before he started giving evidence. Taking notes and asking for hard copies of news articles that he was being questioned about, he said he did not have “leaky” social circles.
He said: “When you are in a situation like this, the moment something private is out, your circle of trust and knowledge decreases over time.” He added: “The stuff in these articles is not the kind of stuff I would talk about openly.”
Harry also claimed he was “forced” to work with reporters and said it was “beyond cruel” to publish an article about “confidential discussions” he had after a photo of a dying Diana was published in the Italian press.
In his written evidence, Harry described an article published in the Daily Mail in July 2006 as “really disgusting”, saying he was having private discussions with his brother, the now-Prince of Wales.
On the witness stand, he said: “The amount of information and detail in this article would not have come from Clarence House; they were plainly listening in to calls as well as spending large sums on private investigators.”
ANL strongly denied wrongdoing and defended the claims.
40 journalists: Members of the press involved in the trial on behalf of ANL
More than 40 witnesses were involved in the trial on behalf of ANL, including former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, who said in his written evidence it was “inconceivable” that anyone at the paper would have carried out the alleged activities.
He later said the claims had had a “deeply upsetting” and sometimes “traumatic” impact on staff at the paper, adding: “I have witnessed the anguish of honest, dedicated journalists who, for three years now, have had an insidious dark shadow hanging over their lives.”
ANL said the claim had been conceived by press reform campaign group Hacked Off, as part of a “political campaign to show that ANL had misled the Leveson Inquiry with a view to putting pressure on the government to implement part two of that inquiry”. Mr Dacre told the court he “emphatically” denied an allegation that he lied to the inquiry into press standards.
In a statement following Tuesday’s judgment, ANL said: “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.”
Up to £38m: Cost of legal battle
The case has been extremely expensive.
Ahead of the trial, all parties filed their budgets to the court, with the total budget for the claimants £18.7m. The budget for ANL totalled £19.9m.
In a ruling published after a costs management hearing last year, Mr Justice Nicklin and Judge David Cook concluded the sums were “manifestly excessive and therefore disproportionate”, and allowed for budgets totalling £4.1m for the claimants and £4.4m for the ANL.
The actual budget could be higher, but the judges’ limits will likely reflect any recovery of costs that could be awarded.
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