Prince Harry has lost his landmark legal battle against the publisher of the Daily Mail, after a High Court judge rejected all of the allegations of unlawful information gathering brought by the Duke of Sussex and six other high-profile claimants.
On July 7, Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed the misuse of private information and breach of confidence claims brought against Associated Newspapers Limited, the publisher of the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, in the case of Lawrence v Associated Newspapers. The judgment followed an approximately 11-week trial between January and March, one of the longest and most expensive privacy trials in British legal history.
The seven claimants, who included Harry, Sir Elton John, Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, alleged that Associated had unlawfully gathered their private and confidential information through covert methods over a period stretching back to 1993. The alleged methods included phone hacking and phone tapping, the bugging of homes and vehicles, blagging, the use of private investigators and corrupt payments to obtain medical and other confidential records.
The judge rejected all of the pleaded allegations of unlawful information gathering. In his summary, he found that the claimants had failed to prove their case where there remained a legitimate and realistic possible lawful source for the information, or where the article-specific evidence did not prove that the material must have been obtained unlawfully.
Associated Newspapers had always denied the allegations, describing them as preposterous smears and arguing that the lawsuit amounted to a fishing expedition by the claimants and their lawyers.
A consequential costs judgment followed on August 21. Court filings made public before the trial indicated that the combined legal costs of both sides were expected to exceed £38 million, with the claimants' lawyers expecting to spend around £18.4 million and Associated nearly £20 million.
The defeat was a significant blow to Harry, who has made reform of the British press a personal mission and has brought a series of lawsuits against newspaper groups since 2019. During the trial, Harry spent a full day giving evidence, and a High Court hearing in October 2025 heard claims that his brother Prince William and sister-in-law Catherine had also been targets of the alleged unlawful activity, claims the publisher denied.
For Associated Newspapers, the judgment was a comprehensive vindication after the case marked the first time the company had been dragged into the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed other British newspaper groups more than a decade ago.