Prince Harry and six other prominent figures are facing a legal bill of up to £50 million after losing their case against the publisher of the Daily Mail, Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL). The High Court dismissed all claims that the Mail had used unlawful methods to gather information for stories, ruling that the claimants had not proved any information was obtained illegally.
In a 436-page verdict, Mr Justice Nicklin said the court could not simply infer unlawful sourcing if a legitimate method remained possible. He also rejected suggestions that senior Mail figures, including former editor Paul Dacre, had lied to the Leveson inquiry. The judge found no evidence of phone hacking, landline tapping, bugging, or corrupt payments, as alleged by the claimants.
The group—including Doreen Lawrence, Sir Elton John, David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost, and Simon Hughes—had accused ANL of systematic unlawful information-gathering across 55 articles and three unpublished incidents. The case was severely undermined when a key witness, private investigator Gavin Burrows, disowned his witness statement as a forgery. The judge said Burrows was 'comprehensively undermined' as a witness.
ANL described the verdict as 'an overwhelming victory for the Daily Mail and its journalists' and said it would seek to recover costs. Paul Dacre called the case a 'conspiracy' orchestrated by press regulation campaigners. Prince Harry and Doreen Lawrence issued a joint statement calling the verdict 'a complete and obvious whitewash'.
