Prince Harry, Elton John & Other Privacy Case Claimants Ordered To Pay Daily Mail Publisher $13 Million

Prince Harry, Elton John, and several other high-profile figures who lost a privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail have been ordered to pay $13 million (£9.5m) to cover the Mail’s legal costs.

The seven claimants, also including Liz Hurley and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, must make the payment by August 28. The fee is an initial payment, and the group will likely have to cough up more cash to cover Associated Newspapers Limited’s full legal bill, which has been estimated to be north of $46 million (£34 million). 

Prince Harry and the other claimants had accused The Daily Mail publisher of unlawful information gathering, including “abhorrent criminal activity and gross breaches of privacy.”

All the claims were dismissed in July, with High Court Judge Mr Justice Nicklin saying that the aggrieved parties had failed to prove their allegations.

A summary of the judgment read: “The Court rejected the attempt to prove the claims by broad inference where there remained a legitimate and realistic possible lawful source pathway, or where the article-specific evidence did not prove that the relevant information must have been obtained unlawfully.”

The lawsuit further alleged that Associated Newspapers commissioned individuals to listen to private telephone calls, paid police officials “with corrupt links to private investigators” for inside information and impersonated individuals to obtain medical records.

Associated Newspapers said the claims were “preposterous smears which appear to be nothing more than a pre-planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the Mail titles into the phone hacking scandal concerning articles up to 30 years old.”

In a statement, Prince Harry attacked the ruling as a “whitewash.”