Prince Harry has lost one of his highest-profile legal fights against the British press. A High Court judge in London on Tuesday dismissed the case he and several other well-known figures had brought against Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail, Variety reported.
What the claimants alleged
The Duke of Sussex was one of a group of claimants, who also included the musician Elton John and the actress Elizabeth Hurley, accusing Associated Newspapers of unlawful information-gathering over many years. Their allegations described tactics such as phone tapping, listening devices and the hiring of private investigators to obtain private information. The publisher denied any wrongdoing, Deadline reported.
The ruling
The judge, Mr. Justice Nicklin, dismissed every one of the 97 allegations at issue. He found that the claimants had not proved their case, and rejected attempts to establish unlawful conduct by broad inference where a lawful explanation for how information was obtained remained realistically possible, Deadline reported.
The decision followed an 11-week trial held earlier in the year, a proceeding whose costs have been estimated in the tens of millions of dollars.
A setback amid other battles
The outcome is a significant defeat for Prince Harry, who has pursued a series of cases against British newspaper groups and has cast his legal campaign as a fight against press intrusion. He was in the United Kingdom for the ruling, which coincided with a London event tied to the Invictus Games, the sporting competition for wounded service members that he founded, NBC News reported.
For Associated Newspapers, the judgment is a vindication after a case that put its past practices under intense scrutiny. For the duke, it is a reminder that his run of litigation against the tabloids, which has produced some settlements and partial successes, can also end in outright loss.
