The ambitious £50 million lawsuit spearheaded by Prince Harry, Doreen Lawrence, and a retinue of other prominent personalities against the Daily Mail’s publishers has been entirely thrown out by the court today.
This sentiment of victory was echoed as the Daily Mail’s Editor-in-Chief heralded what he described as ‘a momentous victory’ after a High Court judge firmly rejected the claims led by Prince Harry and Baroness Doreen Lawrence concerning allegations of phone hacking.
Paul Dacre expressed a sense of ‘overwhelming vindication of our journalism’ after Mr. Justice Nicklin cleared the Mail and its reporters of any wrongdoing, solidifying the trust in their journalistic efforts.
This landmark decision saw the case dismissed entirely, leaving the seven claimants, including renowned figures like Sir Elton John, potentially facing a hefty £50 million in legal costs.
Paul Dacre, the Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers, heartily celebrated the verdict, calling it a triumph not just for the journalists of the Daily Mail but for press freedom as a whole. He remarked, “Today’s verdict is a profound victory for the remarkable journalists at Associated, many of whom have faced great personal challenges during this ordeal, and for a free press. Let’s be clear: this was an attempt, backed by Hacked Off, to take down a newspaper.”
‘The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial.’
There was no immediate reaction from the defeated duke or any of his fellow claimants.
In a blaze of publicity, they falsely accused dozens of professional reporters and writers of commissioning crimes including phone hacking, burglaries, car bugging, landline phone tapping and placing ‘sticky window microphones’ on celebrities’ homes. None of it was true.
The £50million phone hacking case brought by Prince Harry (pictured today speaking at an Invictus Games event at Chatham House after the judgment), Doreen Lawrence and a raft of other high-profile figures against the publishers of the Daily Mail was today dismissed in full
The extraordinary allegation of burgling people’s homes was struck out before the trial even began. Now, in a decisive judgment following a three-month trial at the beginning of this year, Mr Justice Nicklin has thrown out their case in its entirety.
He accepted the explanations of the parade of journalists who came to the High Court to explain the legitimate sourcing of all 57 articles or incidents the claimants had said came from unlawful activity.
Mr Justice Nicklin said in his 436-page ruling: ‘Associated called journalist witnesses who gave lawful explanations for the sourcing of the disputed articles and incidents.
‘The court accepted their evidence, including their denials of UIG [unlawful information gathering].’
Harry this evening branded the High Court judgment which ruled against him in his privacy case against the Daily Mail a ‘whitewash’.
In a joint statement with Baroness Lawrence reacting to the ruling, the Duke of Sussex said: ‘It is a complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected.
‘However, the lengths to which the court has gone to exonerate the Mail is as shocking as it is totally unwarranted…
‘It feels here like one rule for the newspapers and another for the claimants.’
It was Harry who recruited Baroness Lawrence as a ‘trophy’ claimant to the doomed case against the newspaper that had tirelessly championed her and successfully campaigned to jail two of her murdered son Stephen Lawrence’s killers.
The campaigners alighted on Baroness Lawrence as a ‘national treasure’ after suggesting Gary Lineker was unsuitable because ‘he has no dead children’.
Egged on by Harry and anti-Press campaigners, Baroness Lawrence turned on the Mail, accusing the newspaper and its award-winning crime reporter Stephen Wright of landline tapping, blagging, hacking into voicemails and making corrupt payments to serving police officers. It was all found to be false, and today after four years Mr Wright has been comprehensively exonerated.
Mr Justice Nicklin declared Mr Wright a ‘truthful’ witness whose explanations were ‘coherent and plausible’, and roundly dismissed the allegation he had corruptly paid police officers.
As editor of the Mail, Mr Dacre wrote the famous front page headline ‘Murderers!’, which could have seen him jailed for contempt but instead eventually led to the jailing of two of Stephen Lawrence’s killers.
Mr Dacre said today: ‘Why Baroness Lawrence – for whom we have always had profound respect and sympathy – chose to turn on both the paper, and the brilliant reporter who campaigned for justice for her son for over two decades, is something I will never be able to comprehend.’
He described Prince Harry as ‘a confused and angry young man’ and said about his memoir Spare: ‘There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin.’
The judge hailed the Mail’s Royal Editor Rebecca English as ‘an impressive and honest witness’ and ruled her explanations for where she had sourced stories were ‘entirely plausible’.
He threw out an allegation she had tried to get the flight details of Prince Harry’s former girlfriend Chelsy Davey.
The judge was also critical of the claimants’ lawyers for advancing allegations against Ms English at the trial in relation to phone hacking which were ‘entirely unsupported by evidence’.
The four-year legal battle involved seven claimants, who are the Duke of Sussex, 41, Baroness Lawrence, 73, Sir Elton, 79, and his husband David Furnish, model and actress Elizabeth Hurley, 61, actress Sadie Frost, 61, and former Lib Dem MP Sir Simon Hughes, 75.
They are all jointly liable for any legal costs that are awarded against them. A costs hearing is scheduled for July 29, at which who has to pay the estimated total legal costs of £50million will be considered by the judge.
Mr Justice Nicklin said the duke and the other claimants were ‘open to criticism’ for the way they had pursued ‘extremely serious’ allegations that senior Associated staff lied to the Leveson inquiry into Press standards.
He also remarked that Evan Harris, a former Liberal Democrat MP who worked as a researcher for Harry’s lawyers, made an ‘improper and dishonest’ proposal while preparing the claim of Sir Simon Hughes, a former Justice Minister.
Today Associated Newspapers said: ‘We will look to resolve outstanding issues, including the recovery of the costs we have incurred while defending ourselves against this egregious litigation.
‘Mr Justice Nicklin today cleared the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, and dismissed every single one of the 97 allegations made by the claimants. In every case, the Judge accepted the honesty of our journalists’ evidence on how they sourced their stories.
‘This is a magnificent vindication of the Daily Mail’s journalism.
‘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.
‘As we said at the time, these allegations were ‘lurid’ and ‘preposterous’, and were a fishing expedition by the claimants and their legal teams in a politically motivated campaign to muzzle the free Press.
‘The reputations of our decent and hard-working journalists were terribly impugned, and today they have been exonerated.
‘As the judgment clearly shows, every single article was legitimately sourced.’
The claimants’ doomed case was initially bankrolled by the white supremacist millionaire and late Press campaigner Max Mosley, whose cash donations were subsequently used to ‘pay for testimony’ from potential witnesses and induce them to ‘up their game’.
Mr Burrows was given £5,000 a month. Also funding the scheme was Geoff Stunt, father of the playboy James Stunt whose godfather is ‘Adams family’ crime boss Terry Adams.
The plot to ‘bring down the Mail’ – codenamed Operation Bluebird – was more than a decade in the making and formed part of a political strategy designed to pressure the government into a second ‘Leveson’ public inquiry on press reform.
From the moment the case began in 2022, the Daily Mail consistently denied the accusations.
Even the claimants’ own supposed star witness, a private investigator named Gavin Burrows, told them he had never worked for the Mail, yet they ploughed ahead with the case anyway.
Prince Harry, Ms Hurley, Sir Elton, his husband David Furnish and Baroness Lawrence all launched their claims on the basis of alleged ‘admissions’ from Mr Burrows about hacking their voicemails, tapping their landlines, bugging Hugh Grant’s car and, in Ms Hurley’s case, placing a sticky microphone on her dining room window – none of which was true.
Mr Burrows said in his evidence his ‘confession’ statement had been penned by Prince Harry’s legal researchers and was ‘a pack of lies’ complete with a forgery for his signature. The statement was authenticated with a ‘certificate of compliance’ by Baroness Lawrence’s solicitor Anjlee Sangani. She quit the case just before the trial started.
Mr Burows said Baroness Lawrence had been ‘duped’ into joining the case by the campaigners who boasted suing newspapers was a lucrative ‘gravy train’ and the ‘perfect scam’.
Farcically, when Mr Burrows came to give evidence on oath, the claimants tied themselves in knots and were reduced to calling their star witness a liar and a drunk.
Mr Justice Nicklin said Mr Burrows had been an ‘argumentative, evasive’ witness whose ‘credibility was comprehensively undermined’ and had not provided ‘any coherent or reliable evidential foundation’ for his claims.
Ms Hurley, who repeatedly sobbed into a tissue throughout her own time in the witness box, accused the Mail of ‘monstrous’ conduct.
But the model and actress’s allegations including that the Mail planted ‘sticky window microphones’ on her windowsill relied heavily on the suggestion that Mr Burrows had ‘confessed’ to targeting her – which he said was lies.
The judge said it was ‘clear that she had been deeply shocked when she learned of Mr Burrows’ allegations concerning her’ but that ‘she has limited evidence to give on the contentious matters in dispute’.
Sir Elton John, giving testimony over a video link wearing bright-blue-framed glasses, snapped at the Mail’s barrister and demanded to know why he wasn’t being questioned about the ‘horrendous things’ the claimants’ legal team alleged Mr Burrows had done, in his claim brought jointly with his husband.
The judge said that Sir Elton had ‘appeared to find the limited extent to which he was questioned to be frustrating’ and, like the other claimants, the singer had ‘limited evidence to give’ on the matters in hand.
Media lawyer Louis Charalambous called the case ‘a calamity for all seven claimants’ and said: ‘It is rare for a newspaper to win cases like this. The spotlight will now be on the people who encouraged the claimants to bring these cases and the financial position it puts them in. In all likelihood it spells the end of this kind of litigation.’
The campaigners pulling the strings behind the scenes were serial conman and convicted phone hacker Graham Johnson and Evan Harris, the former Lib Dem MP who went on to run pressure group Hacked Off.
Together with a group of lawyers who have grown rich by suing newspapers, the campaigners embarked on a scheme to destroy the Mail. They offered private investigators cash to give evidence ‘whether factual or not’, invented claims of hacking and tried to recruit celebrity ‘victims’.
Dr Harris spent a decade urging famous names to ‘sue the a*** off the Mail’.
The Mirror group of newspapers was sued in 2023 and The Sun in 2024. The anti-Press campaigners were convinced the Daily Mail ‘had the most money’ and ‘would pay up’ rather than fight, the court heard they had boasted.
Instead, more than 40 Mail journalists past and present helped publisher Associated Newspapers mount a trenchant defence. The journalists had spent years with baseless claims of criminal conduct hanging over them.
