Prince Harry and six others must pay millions in costs to the Daily Mail newspaper in the United Kingdom after a judge on Friday ruled their doomed hacking case was pursued in a way that was ‘unreasonable to a high degree’.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, Baroness Lawrence, Sir Elton John and the four others have seven days to pay the first £9,544,355, (TT$81 million) the High Court ordered.
Mr Justice Matthew Nicklin granted a rare ‘indemnity order’ obliging the seven persons to bear the brunt of the costs of their disastrous legal action. Such orders are usually only granted in cases where a judge believes there has been bad conduct, the Daily Mail reported.
He ruled the order was justified because the litigation against the Daily Mail had been ‘pursued in a way that took it well outside the norm’.
The judge said: ‘The claims – and the manner in which they were brought, pleaded, pursued, maintained and publicly advanced – involved a combination of circumstances and conduct which took the litigation outside the ordinary and reasonable conduct of civil proceedings.’
He added: ‘The cumulative effect of these matters takes the case well outside the norm. The conduct was unreasonable to a high degree.’
A spokesman for the Mail’s publisher, Associated Newspapers, said: ‘His judgment is a devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors and executives.’
The Mail’s publisher spent £34.4 million over four years defending innocent journalists against serious criminal accusations. In a landmark ruling on July 7, Mr Justice Nicklin completely exonerated the Mail’s journalists, throwing out in full allegations that they hacked, bugged and blagged to get stories.
Today’s ruling on the costs of the failed case comes as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex prepare to return to Britain six years after quitting their life in the UK.
The judgment means Associated Newspapers is free to seek a much larger proportion of its costs from the case waged by Harry – who once styled his campaign against newspapers as ‘slaying dragons’ – and the other claimants. They also include Sir Elton’s husband David Furnish, model Elizabeth Hurley, actress Sadie Frost and former Lib Dem minister Sir Simon Hughes.
It is a costly blow to the seven claimants, whose insurance policy only covers them for £16.2 million.
And it does not include their own legal costs, which are thought likely to be at least £20 million, although it is understood their lawyers acted, at least in part, on a ‘no-win, no-fee’ basis.
After winning the case, the publisher applied for its legal costs to be paid on the fuller ‘indemnity basis’ because Harry’s side had pursued the high-profile case in a ‘cavalier’ and ‘highly unreasonable and inexcusable’ fashion.
Serious criminal allegations of phone hacking were sprung on wrongly-accused journalists without any foundation, and some aspects were ‘not only unfair’ but ‘in flagrant breach’ of the judge’s repeated warnings to the claimants’ lawyers, it was said by Associated’s lawyers.
Daily Mail
