A UK High Court has ordered Prince Harry and six other high-profile claimants to make an initial payment of £9.5 million to Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publisher of the Daily Mail, after they lost a privacy and unlawful information-gathering case.
The claimants, including musician Elton John, his husband David Furnish, and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, had accused the newspaper publisher of using unlawful methods to obtain private information. ANL denied the allegations.
In a ruling delivered on July 7 after an 11-week trial, Justice Matthew Nicklin found that the claimants had failed to prove their allegations.
Following a two-day hearing on legal costs, the court ordered the seven claimants to pay an interim sum of £9,544,355 by 4 p.m. on August 28.
The court noted that ANL had claimed about £34.5 million in legal costs but described the amount as exceptionally high and raised concerns about whether all the costs were reasonably incurred.
The final amount the claimants will be required to pay has yet to be determined. The court has also set October 2 as the deadline for any application by the claimants for permission to appeal the July 7 judgment.
In a joint statement following the earlier ruling, Prince Harry and campaigner Doreen Lawrence described the decision as a “complete and obvious whitewash.”
