Judge dismisses Prince Harry's privacy invasion lawsuit against publisher of Daily Mail

Prince Harry is set to visit London for the Invictus Games. Royal commentator Afua Hagan discusses his concerns with security and whether he will visit family.

LONDON — Prince Harry ‘s final lawsuit aimed at taming the British tabloids ended in defeat Tuesday as a judge said he failed to prove his privacy invasion claims against the publisher of the Daily Mail.

Justice Matthew Nicklin rejected the broad inferences the Duke of Sussex relied on to try to show that Associated Newspapers Ltd. engaged in unlawful activities. He said there was a shortage of evidence to support the claims and found there was a possibility that the news stories came from legitimate sources.

“In substance, the claimants’ case invites the Court to conclude that, because the information was private and because Associated cannot positively explain how it was sourced, the article must have been unlawfully sourced,” Nicklin wrote. “That is not a permissible approach.”

The ruling scuttles a bid by Harry and six others, including singer Elton John and actor-model Elizabeth Hurley, which sought substantial damages but could leave them with a large lawyers’ bill. Legal costs were estimated at about 40 million pounds ($53.5 million) for years of case preparation and an 11-week trial.

The publisher called it an “overwhelming victory” and a “magnificent vindication” of the Mail’s journalism.

“The reputations of our decent and hard-working journalists were terribly impugned, and today they have been exonerated,” Associated said in a statement.

The newspapers had denied the allegations as “preposterous,” insisting the roughly 50 articles at issue were based on lawful sources including friends, royal aides and publicists who offered information to reporters.

The 436-page decision leaves a mixed legacy for Harry’s trio of lawsuits accusing tabloid publishers of using unlawful tactics, such as phone hacking, or hiring private detectives to dig up dirt to snoop on his life.

Harry won a judgment in 2023 that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for “widespread and habitual” phone hacking. Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship U.K. tabloid, The Sun, made an unprecedented apology for intruding on his life for years, and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.

Mark Stephens, a media lawyer not involved in the case, said Harry’s first significant loss was due to a lack of evidence such as admissions of culpability that he had in previous lawsuits.

“This was always a mosaic case where little inferences from different things were being put together by the lawyers for Prince Harry,” Stephens said. “Associated newspapers’ lawyers cleverly rearranged the tiles to show an innocent picture as opposed to the culpable picture that the claimants’ lawyers were trying to demonstrate.”

The verdict, released remotely with no court hearing, coincided with Harry’s visit home to the U.K., which has been dominated by headlines over his latest efforts to repair a rift with his father, King Charles III.

Harry has said his litigation -- in which he broke with royal family tradition to seek relief in the courts -- was a primary source of his falling out with his father and brother, Prince William.

His grudge with the press runs deep. He blames it for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi in Paris, and for attacks on his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, that led the couple to abandon royal life and move to the United States in 2020.

“They continue to come after me, they have made my wife’s life an absolute misery,” he testified as he choked back tears in the witness box during the trial in January.

Attorney David Sherborne said the Daily Mail and its sister publication, Mail on Sunday, used its journalists, freelance reporters and private eyes for “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering” to snoop on his clients.

Defense lawyer Antony White said the case relied on conjecture and inferences when the more likely source of information was “ordinary, legitimate journalism.” He said Harry was “inclined to see unlawful evidence gathering, in particular voicemail interception, everywhere.”

Other claimants in the case were actor Sadie Frost, anti‑racism activist Doreen Lawrence, former politician Simon Hughes and John’s husband, David Furnish.

The Mail trial played out differently than the Mirror case, with many more journalists defending their work in court. Some Mail reporters pointed to official mouthpieces, such as a palace spokesperson, and others named their sources to dispute Harry’s assertion that his “social circles were not leaky.”

“They were not all tight-lipped,” Katie Nicholl, a former Mail on Sunday editor, said about Harry’s associates. “I had very good sources in the inner circle.”

Brian Melley, The Associated Press