Prince Harry and Fellow Claimants Must Pay £9.5 million to Mail After Judge Rules Hacking Case Was ‘Unreasonable to a High Degree’

A High Court judge has ordered Prince Harry, Baroness Lawrence, Sir Elton John and four other claimants to pay an initial £9.5 million as a downpayment on costs to Associated Newspapers after ruling their hacking case was “unreasonable to a high degree”. Mr Justice Nicklin granted a rare indemnity order – typically reserved for cases of bad conduct – after finding the litigation was pursued in a manner that took it “well outside the norm” of civil proceedings. The Mail has the story:

Prince Harry and his fellow claimants must pay millions to the the Mail after a judge today ruled their doomed hacking case was pursued in a way that was “unreasonable to a high degree”.

The Duke of Sussex, Baroness Lawrence, Sir Elton John and the four others have seven days to pay the first £9,544,355, the High Court ordered.

Mr Justice Nicklin granted a rare “indemnity order” obliging the claimants 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.

He ruled the order was justified because the litigation against the 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 £34.4million over four years defending innocent journalists against serious criminal accusations. In a landmark ruling on July 7th, 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 £16.2million.

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.

An indemnity award means that legal costs are considered on a higher basis than the “standard” way of assessing them. Associated does not need to show its costs are “proportionate” and does not need to adhere to a previous budget set by the court.

Today Mr Justice Nicklin listed a series of reasons why the claimants deserved to pay higher costs, including the “continued pursuit of serious allegations that lacked an adequate evidential foundation”.

They also ploughed on with their case despite knowing private investigator Gavin Burrows had withdrawn his cooperation.

During the trial, Mr Burrows – their supposed star witness – declared that his supposed “confession” statement was “a pack of lies” written by others and complete with a forgery for his signature. The most serious accusations of criminal conduct against innocent Mail journalists were all based on the claims involving Mr Burrows, who was paid substantial sums of money by the claimants’ lead researcher, the convicted phone hacker Graham Johnson.

The Mail spokesman said: “From well before the trial started, the claimants’ lawyers knew that their main witness had denied making the preposterous allegations on which the claims were based.

“Despite this collapse in evidence to support the extremely serious allegations of “abhorrent criminal activity, crimes and terrible and reprehensible covert acts” by the Mail, they were emblazoned in a lurid press release issued on behalf of Baroness Lawrence, Prince Harry and the other claimants, with the exception of Sir Simon Hughes.

“The allegations were not withdrawn, and were pursued until the bitter end of the trial.”

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: You can read the Telegraph’s account of Mr Justice Nicklin’s latest ruling here and the Times’s account here.