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Prince Harry’s accusation of a “whitewash” in his unsuccessful lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mailhas been cited by the newspaper’s lawyers in their bid to force the prince and six other claimants to pay higher costs than is standard.
Harry and six other public figures had alleged phone hacking, phone line tapping and other illegal practices at the Mail‘s titles but lost the case on every claim. On Wednesday, the High Court in London began hearing an argument between the two sides over how much of the Mail’s costs the claimants should have to pay.
Prior to the hearing, Associated Newspapers Limited had indicated costs of more than £50 million [around $67 million] after successfully defending the case.
Court filings released on Wednesday, seen by Newsweek, suggested the judge would have to decide on a slightly lower figure of £34.5 million [around $45 million] said to have been spent by the Mail on its case.
The filings show Harry and the other claimants have insurance that is capped at £16.2 million, meaning if the Mail were to be awarded the full amount submitted then the claimants may need to pay £18.2 million of their own money. If spread evenly across the seven claimants, that would amount to £2.6 million each.
The Mail cited Harry’s reaction to losing, in which he alleged the judgment was a “whitewash,” among its argument that costs should be awarded at a higher rate than the budgets originally set by the court.
The other litigants are musician Sir Elton John, his husband David Furnish, actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, racial justice campaigner Baroness Doreen Lawrence and politician Sir Simon Hughes.
Why It Matters
Harry and the other claimants launched the case hoping to prove journalists from the Mail titles broke the law in gathering stories. The prince described the significant emotional impact of frenzied coverage which he said damaged his relationship with ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy.
However, after winning on every allegation the Mail‘s former editor-in-chief Paul Dacre, who ran the paper during the relevant period, described the case as “a conspiracy” to “destroy” the newspaper group. At the costs hearing, Associated mounted further allegations against the claimants and their legal teams, turning the tables on the PR aspects of the case.
Prince Harry’s Case
The case was filed in 2022 and brought allegations that included phone hacking and unlawfully obtaining personal information using private investigators, as well as other unlawful practices.
Following a more than 10-week trial earlier this year, Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed all claims. The judge concluded Harry and the other claimants had failed to prove the articles and incidents they cited were the product of unlawful information gathering.
The judge accepted the explanations given by Mail journalists and rejected the argument that private information about their lives could only have been gathered illegally.
Harry’s case included allegations Mail journalists had unlawfully obtained flight records for his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy and had broken the law to find out about a phone call between him and Prince William about photographs published in an Italian newspaper of their mother Princess Diana dying.
“I do not recall reading this article at the time but it is really disgusting, especially with the crude headline and explicit reference to a phone call,” Harry said in a witness statement seen by Newsweek.
“My brother and I were relatively young at the time (I was just 21) and we were having private conversations about photographs of our dead mother which had been put into the public domain. It was obviously a ‘highly emotional call’ for William and I as to what we should do.”
The July 2006 story was headlined: “LET HER REST IN PEACE.” Harry suggested in his statement the story had been obtained because “they were plainly listening in to calls.”
However, Nicklin said in his judgment that “the pleaded case is thin” and “identifies no specific unlawful act,” adding that the journalist, Rebecca English, offered the “entirely plausible” explanation the story had come from a palace press officer.
Overall, the judgment represented a significant setback for Harry, who spent years pursuing legal action against British newspaper groups and described reforming press practices as his “life’s work.”
During Wednesday’s hearing, the Mail‘s legal team launched their own allegations against Harry and the legal team behind the case.
Prince Harry’s ‘Whitewash’ Claim Cited by ‘Mail’
Antony White, representing the Mail, asked the court to award costs on an “indemnity” basis, regardless of whether its costs were proportionate. If the court agrees, that could leave the claimants needing to pay far more than was budgeted for, going beyond the amount for which they had secured insurance.
White cited the conduct of the claimants and their legal teams in the case, specifically referencing a joint statement released by Harry and Baroness Lawrence after the judgment.
“It is a complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected,” Harry and Lawrence said. “However, the lengths to which the Court has gone to exonerate the Mail is as shocking as it is totally unwarranted.”
A filing by White and the Mail‘s legal team, seen by Newsweek, read: “Instead of accepting the Court’s determination of the Claims…Prince Harry and Baroness Lawrence now seek to suggest that the Judgment was ‘a complete and obvious whitewash’ in their public statement on the Judgment.
“That conduct sought—and achieved—global publicity for a continued allegation that Associated was in fact guilty of the wrongdoing alleged.”
“Associated accordingly seeks an order for indemnity costs in relation to the entirety of the proceedings,” the filing continued. “If the Claimants’ conduct in these proceedings does not attract an order for indemnity costs then it is difficult to see what case would.”
Harry and Lawrence’s legal teams countered in their own filing that “The costs to be ordered at this hearing concern the action itself, not the reaction to it.”
Allegations Witnesses Were Paid
White also cited conduct by the claimants’ legal team in the build-up to and during the trial in his request for higher costs, suggesting a number of witnesses who provided testimony “were paid for that evidence.”
Among them was a private investigator Gavin Burrows, who the Mail argues was paid £75,000 for evidence that Burrows later “disavowed.”
“For the most serious of their allegations,” the filing reads, “the Claimants persisted in their untenable reliance on the ‘evidence’ of Gavin Burrows which had been purchased.”
“The Claimants’ individual cases were pursued for the most part without any supporting documentary evidence and on the barest inferential basis,” the filing continued, in a separate section.
“Allegations of the utmost seriousness were put by the Claimants to Associated’s witnesses without any prior notice or evidential basis.
“At the same time, other serious allegations—including the most important elements of the allegations of perjury advanced against three of Associated’s senior executives—were either not put to the witnesses at all or only partially put, without at any stage being formally withdrawn.
“All of this was done with the benefit of absolute privilege and in the glare of full publicity, courted by and on the Claimants’ behalf.”
Meanwhile, Harry’s legal team said in its own filing that he and the other claimants “conducted themselves honestly and in good faith. Their evidence was largely accepted, their answers were commended, and no findings of dishonesty were made against any of them.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Daniel Orton and Robert Greenall
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