Prince Harry has lost his High Court case against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publisher of the Daily Mail. The Duke of Sussex, along with Sir Elton John and other claimants, had alleged unlawful information gathering by the publisher. A High Court judge dismissed all claims, ruling that ANL had established a complete defence.
Prince Harry's Emotional Testimony
Harry appeared in court in January to give evidence, becoming emotional multiple times as he recounted the trauma of intimate details of his and Meghan Markle's lives being made public. He said, with a faltering voice: "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 that articles written between 2001 and 2013 focused "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."
Claims of Unlawful Information Gathering
The 11-week trial at the High Court in London heard claims from a group including Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Liz Hurley, Sir Elton John, and his husband David Furnish. Allegations included voicemail interception, landline tapping, and obtaining information by deception, known as "blagging," carried out by private investigators, freelance journalists, and ANL staff.
ANL strongly denied the claims, arguing they had "established a complete defence to all parts of the claims on the merits" and that the cases were brought too late.
Impact on Prince Harry
Sherborne defended Harry's decision to take legal action, stating: "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." The court heard that Harry felt he had "endured a sustained campaign of attacks against him" from the publisher.
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.
