UK High Court to rule on a privacy case brought by Prince Harry against Daily Mail publisher.
Prince Harry, the estranged younger son of King Charles, has lost a privacy lawsuit he launched with other high-profile British figures against the publisher of the bestselling newspaper the Daily Mail, in a verdict he called a “complete and obvious whitewash”.
Judge Matthew Nicklin ruled in London’s High Court on Tuesday that although the claimants suspected journalists at the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday newspapers had used unlawful methods to obtain information, they had not proved this.
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“The court rejected the argument that, simply because information was private, and because Associated could not positively explain how it had been sourced, the relevant article must have been unlawfully sourced,” the ruling said.
A joint statement from Prince Harry and Doreen Lawrence, another of the claimants, said the verdict was “not altogether unexpected”.
“We came to court seeking justice and accountability. But we have received neither,” the statement said.
“The lengths to which the Court has gone to exonerate the Mail is as shocking as it is totally unwarranted.”
The case was brought by Harry, Elton John and five other high-profile British figures who accused the publisher of violating their privacy from the early 1990s to the 2010s.
The prince, 41, who has long blamed the press for the 1997 Paris car crash that killed his mother, Princess Diana, saw bringing the lawsuit against the Daily Mail publisher as his “public duty”.
The former working royal held back tears when he gave testimony at the High Court in January, the first royal to do so in 130 years, and accused the Daily Mail of making the life of his wife, Meghan, “an absolute misery”.
The newspapers 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 publisher called the ruling “an overwhelming victory for the Daily Mail and its journalists”.
It was the third legal case brought by Prince Harry involving the British press. The prince settled with newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch in January 2025. The publisher agreed to pay substantial damages and had to apologise to the prince for intruding into his personal life for more than a decade.
He also won a case against the Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mirror, for unlawful information gathering, such as phone hacking.
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