Prince Harry and a group of six other high-profile household names have lost a long-running legal battle against Associated Newspapers over allegations of illegal information gathering, including phone hacking, after an 11-week trial earlier this year. Mr Justice Nicklin said in a 436 page judgment the group of claimants had
Rosie Harris-Davison
Tuesday 07 July 2026 2:11 pm | Updated: Tuesday 07 July 2026 2:27 pm
Prince Harry and a group of six other high-profile household names have lost a long-running legal battle against Associated Newspapers over allegations of illegal information gathering, including phone hacking, after an 11-week trial earlier this year.
Mr Justice Nicklin said in a 436 page judgment the group of claimants had failed to prove the allegations and therefore dismissed all their claims, noting the evidence “did not prove that the relevant information must have been obtained unlawfully”.
A spokesperson for Associated Newspapers said the judgment is “an overwhelming victory for the Daily Mail and its journalists, and for a free press generally.”
The Duke of Sussex, Sir Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, actresses Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence, and former Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes brought a lawsuit in 2022 against Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail, claiming serious privacy breaches dating back over 30 years.
Prince Harry’s claim centres on 14 articles published between 2001 and 2013, focusing heavily on his private life and relationships prior to meeting his wife Megan Markle.
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The Duke of Sussex alleged that journalists used landline tapping and voicemail interception, and obtained information deceptively through impersonation techniques known as ‘blagging’ to access confidential records such as flight details and travel plans.
The judgment follows a trial which began in the High Court in January with over 40 witnesses giving evidence for the publisher, which strongly denied all the claims against it and said it “has established a complete defence to all parts of the claims on the merits”, and that the cases have been brought too late.
This comes after Prince Harry failed to strike out part of a libel claim in December 2023 against Associated Newspapers over a February 2022 article about his lawsuit against the Home Office over his downgraded UK security arrangements, and was ordered to pay the publishers’ lawyers £50,000.
A host of hacking claims
This marks the third legal dispute brought by Prince Harry against a newspaper group, which previously sued News Group Newspapers, which publishes The Sun and Rupert Murdoch’s defunct News of the World, and publisher of The Mirror, Mirror Group Newspapers, over allegations of illegally gathering information.
A High Court judge in December 2023 found there was “extensive” phone hacking by Mirror Group Newspapers, which is owned by Reach Plc, and awarded the Prince £140,600 in damages in February 2024, when the duke agreed to settle the case.
Prince Harry settled the case in January 2025 as the publisher offered “an unequivocal apology” for the phone hacking.
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