The Duke of Sussex has lost his multi-million dollar privacy case against Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), which publishes the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline.
Other high-profile claimants who joined Prince Harry in the action included Elton John and his husband David Furnish, actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, and politician Simon Hughes.
Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, was also part of the case.
The individuals accused publisher ANL of “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information-gathering” over several years.
Dozens of journalists and private investigators were cited in the group’s claims, as 55 articles published between 1997 and 2015, and three incidents that did not lead to articles, were presented to the court.
The allegations including phone hacking, landline tapping and bugging via private investigators, and making corrupt payments to police.
Prince Harry testifies in court. Image: X
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Harry speaks about privacy case verdict
Prince Harry and Lawrence issued a joint statement saying the verdict was a “complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected”.
It continued: “When the court says there is not sufficient evidence of wrongdoing … then one does wonder how justice was ever going to be achieved.”
The group now face potential legal costs of tens of millions of dollars.
Why did Prince Harry lose his privacy case?
The High Court in London dismissed the group’s claims on the basis that they had not proved any information had been obtained unlawfully.
The 436-page written verdict, Justice Nicklin said the court “could not simply infer that a story had been obtained unlawfully if there remained a legitimate and realistic legal way in which it could have been sourced,” The Guardian reported.
ANL argued that the claims were “lurid” and “preposterous”. In each instance, it said, “stories were sourced legitimately from press officers, previous articles or the leaky social circles of celebrities.”
An ANL spokesperson said of the win yesterday:
“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.
“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.”
Top image: Prince Harry, Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley