The Duke of Sussex, Sir Elton John and Baroness Doreen Lawrence are facing a combined legal bill estimated at £50m after a High Court judge delivered a damning blow to their decade-spanning privacy case, ruling there was insufficient evidence to suggest the Daily Mail publisher engaged in unlawful information gathering.
London’s High Court has dismissed the blockbuster lawsuit brought by Prince Harry and a cohort of high-profile figures against Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. Joining the Duke in the litigation were Sir Elton John, actor Elizabeth Hurley, and several prominent politicians.
The claimants had argued that the newspapers systematically hacked their voicemails and listened in to private telephone calls between 1993 and 2011, allegedly using illegally obtained data to fuel news stories about their private lives.
However, after scrutinising the arguments presented by both sides, Mr Justice Nicklin rejected the claims. The judge declared the evidence was far too thin to support the accusations, stressing there was “no basis to infer that the news articles were derived from unlawful sources.”
In his ruling, the judge cautioned against the claimants’ flawed reasoning. “The claimants’ case invites the court to draw the inference that, because published information was private and Associated is unable unequivocally to explain the source from which it was derived, the information for the article must have been unlawfully obtained,” Mr Justice Nicklin stated. “That is an impermissible approach.”
With the claim struck out, it is now highly likely the high-profile group will be liable for the full legal costs. Associated Newspapers has assessed these costs to be in the region of £50 million.
