A judge in Britain on Tuesday ruled against Prince Harry and other celebrities in a lawsuit that accused the publisher of The Daily Mail of targeting them with unlawful information gathering. The decision was a stinging blow for Harry, who until Tuesday had mostly emerged victorious in his yearslong legal battles against British tabloids.
In a written statement that summarized the ruling, Judge Matthew Nicklin said that “suspicion, even where understandable, was not enough,” and that Harry and the other high-profile claimants had failed to prove “that the information complained of had been obtained unlawfully.”
The claimants had accused Associated Newspapers, the publisher of The Daily Mail, of phone hacking and intruding into their private lives between 1993 and 2011. The group, which also owns several other newspapers that are not implicated in the case, had denied wrongdoing.
In a statement on Tuesday, Associated Newspapers said: “The reputations of our decent and hard-working journalists were terribly impugned, and today they have been exonerated.”
Harry lives in California with his wife and their children but was on a trip to Britain this week that has been overshadowed by drama and confusion over his family’s travel plans. In a joint statement, Harry and Doreen Lawrence, one of the other claimants in the case whose son was murdered in 1993 and who became a campaigner for social justice, said the decision was a “complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected.”
“We came to Court seeking justice and accountability. But we have received neither,” they said.
What was the case about?
The lawsuit was the sole unresolved case among several that Harry has brought in recent years against British tabloids.
Harry and the other claimants had accused Associated Newspapers of carrying out or commissioning unlawful activities to reveal private information about their lives for articles published in The Daily Mail and its sister newspaper, The Mail on Sunday.
Other claimants included Elton John and his husband, the actresses Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, as well as a former British government minister and a racial justice campaigner.
They accused private investigators of listening into phone calls, intercepting voice mail messages and tricking people into handing over information to obtain phone numbers, medical records and bills.
The trial began in January at London’s High Court. In court, Harry became visibly emotional as he described his confrontation with Associated Newspapers, saying, “They continue to come after me, they have made my wife’s life an absolute misery.”
What did the ruling say?
Judge Nicklin said the court had rejected the attempt to prove that the information used in the articles entered as evidence must have been obtained unlawfully.
The judge said he had declined to rule on whether unlawful information gathering by Associated Newspapers had become “widespread and habitual.” Instead, he ruled on the merits of each individual claim on an article-by-article basis.
He said he accepted the accounts of the journalists “who gave lawful explanations for the sourcing of the disputed articles and incidents.”
In a summary of the more than 400-page decision, the judge added, “the Court rejected the argument that, simply because information was private, and because Associated could not positively explain how it had been sourced, the relevant article must have been unlawfully sourced.”
How much did the case cost?
It was an extremely expensive case, with total legal costs for the two-and-a-half month trial estimated at around 40 million pounds, or $53.5 million, according to figures provided to the court by both sides and cited by the British press.
The total costs will be determined in a hearing this month, and the judge could decide that the claimants are responsible for paying all of the expenses.
Associated Newspapers said in its statement on Tuesday that the publisher would “look to resolve outstanding issues, including the recovery of the costs we have incurred while defending ourselves against this egregious litigation.”
What happened in Prince Harry’s other cases?
This case was just one of several pursued by Harry since 2020, when he and his wife stepped down from their royal roles and left Britain, later moving to Montecito, Calif.
Many cases have centered on accusations of media intrusion, which Harry said was a key reason behind their decision to move. Harry told Oprah Winfrey in 2021 that he feared “history repeating itself,” referring to the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a car crash while she was being chased by paparazzi in Paris in 1997.
He won damages in a case against the Mirror Group in 2023, with a judge ruling that his phone had been hacked. During that case, Harry became the first senior royal to testify in court since 1891.
In January 2025, Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers agreed to pay a “substantial” amount of damages to Harry to settle a long-running lawsuit, which related to articles in The Sun and the long-closed News of the World. News Group apologized for “serious intrusion” into Harry’s personal life between 1996 and 2011 and admitted for the first time to unlawful activities by private investigators working for The Sun.
Lizzie Dearden contributed reporting.
