The Duke of Sussex and six other prominent figures have lost their case against the publisher of the Daily Mail over claims it sourced stories using an array of unlawful methods over two decades.
In a ruling that is likely to signal an end to new litigation relating to the phone-hacking scandal, the high court dismissed all the claims, stating the claimants had not proved information had been obtained unlawfully.
The written verdict from Mr Justice Nicklin said the court could not simply infer a story had been obtained unlawfully if there was a legitimate and realistic legal way in which they could have been sourced.
Prince Harry was one of a group of seven prominent figures who launched the multimillion-pound case against Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), which publishes the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline.
They accused the publisher of “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering” over several years. Dozens of journalists and private investigators were named in the group’s claims.
ANL’s legal team described the claims as “lurid” and “preposterous”. In each instance, it said, stories were sourced legitimately from press officers, previous articles or the “leaky” social circles of celebrities.
Other claimants in the case were Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence; the singer Elton John and his husband, David Furnish; the actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost; and the former Liberal Democrat minister Simon Hughes.
The group presented the court with 55 articles published between 1997 and 2015, and three incidents that did not lead to articles, that they claimed demonstrated unlawful information gathering.
A series of extraordinary claims of illegality at the Mail were made by the claimants’ legal team, which alleged “habitual and widespread” wrongdoing. They included claims of phone hacking, landline tapping and bugging via private investigators, as well as making corrupt payments to police.
All the claims were dismissed by the court.
ANL said the verdict represented “an overwhelming victory for the Daily Mail and its journalists, and for a free press generally”.
“This is a magnificent vindication of the Daily Mail’s journalism,” a spokesperson said. “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.
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“The reputations of our decent and hard working journalists were terribly impugned, and today they have been exonerated. As the judgement clearly shows, every single article was legitimately sourced.”
It potentially leaves the claimants with a huge bill for the case, which is thought to be as much as £50m.
Dozens of editors and journalists, including the formidable former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, gave evidence denying illegal activity.
Harry was the first of the claimants to give evidence at the 11-week trial, in which he said the Mail’s titles had made his wife’s life “an absolute misery”.
More details soon …
