Duke of Sussex & Others vs ANL: thread 5

[bluegreygreen]

This is the fifth thread discussing the case Prince Harry (and 6 others) brought against the Daily Mail (Associated Newspapers Limited; ANL) for alleged unlawful information gathering (UIG).
The claimants were: Prince Harry (PH); Doreen Lawrence (DL); Liz Hurley (EH/LH); Elton John (EJ); David Furnish (DF); Simon Hughes (SH); Sadie Frost (SF). They were represented by David Sherborne (DS).
The defendant (ANL) was represented by Anthony White (AMW).

Judgement was handed down by Judge Nicklin on 7th July 2026.
All claims were dismissed.
Links to the summary and full judgement are below.
We are currently awaiting decisions around costs, with the next hearing due on 29-30th July.

The threads to date were thorough discussions of the evidence (so far as we were able to obtain it), with posters giving links and explaining their views.
Following the judgement, we discussed the judgement itself, the reaction, statements made by different parties and ongoing relevant issues.

We have mostly kept things civil by avoiding more general discussion on Royal Family members, which can become partisan, and trying not to be derailed from the main topic of the thread.

We have occasionally included (when things slowed with the title case) other cases or discussions with a specific theme of free speech/press freedom, particularly when related to those with money or power preventing others from speaking.

Links to previous threads
Thread 1
Thread 2
Thread 3
Thread 4

There was limited direct reporting from court after the celebrities gave evidence; what there we followed on this link
Sky news link to court case

Summary judgement

Full judgement

if you entered into a contract / the case on the basis of misleading/ false evidence or you were told it would cost you nothing or never go to trial

i know it’s wishful thinking but id love to hear what went on behind the scenes. Probably as ingesting as what happened in court

No I realize this

Just found it an odd coincidence that Cherie appeared in the Charlotte Griffiths' "pill gate" article because she found - 20-somethings - Charlotte and Euan Blair snuggling on the sofa watching a movie (more movie snuggles!). Cherie's response was to throw her out of No 10, late at night without money for a taxi.

6 spoilt, greedy, vindictive people 😂😂😂 what could go wrong!!
They will all turn on each other once the costs are announced and I am here for it.

Edited to say: more than 6 if you include the greedy solicitors, barristers, investigators, hacked off, Hugh Grant, bylines and all the others riding the gravy train.

Agree. It’s already started with PH&DL unilaterally attacking the judge, then SH going solo with his statement, the rest of them - crickets. Already fragmented.

They will argue over the ‘joint costs’ part, I think, on the basis of who stuffed them up the most.

(They each have their individual costs, apparently, which I suspect they are each stuck with, then there are these ‘joint costs’. I heard a solicitor called Marcus Johnstone discuss them online. I have no idea how these break down though.)

Cherie Blair used to get a regular, constant bad press back in the day and I'm sure a lot of it was unpleasant sexism.

It is possible she was/is awful too but either way she was a woman trying to have a career and a family in the public eye and it's a shame to see it all stirred up again.

I would be concerned if a showbizz / celebrity gossip journalist from the Daily Mail had wormed her G-string ways into my home via my son - especially if my home was No10 and my husband was the PM. Think CB is a good judge of character and knew what she was looking at.

Regarding costs, is it correct that anyone who wishes to bring a civil case first has to demonstrate to the court their ability to pay all costs should the case not go their way?

@bluegreygreen Yes - they cannot demand an appeal and expect it to
happen. The bar is pretty high.

Of course - but I would have been inclined to call (and if necessary pay for) a taxi 🚖 with feigned politeness in her place. After all she was a barrister in a political world

"Cherie Blair ordered me a taxi" is a nothingburger but "Cherie Blair threw me penniless out in the streets in the middle of the night" gives a lot more ammo if she was worried about journalists.

I wondered if Harry and Euan ran in the same circles back in the day - I think they are the same age.

Only someone who presents a real risk of not being likely to pay them if they lose - e.g. a shell company, someone who lives outside of the UK with no assets in the jurisdiction etc. The defendant can make an application for “security for costs” if they think this is an issue, and the court can order the claimant to pay a sum of money to the court (its held in a deposit account by the Ministry of Justice) until the case is over. If the claimant wins, they get it back, and if they lose it goes to the defendant to pay their costs. If they don’t pay it into court, their claim can’t continue.

Why would Cherie know the contents of CG's purse? If you are an adult woman, old enough to work as a journalist you should have enough about you to be able to make your excuses and leave - as journos used to end their pieces.

We are drifting away from the topic of the thread, but the Cherie Blair event occurred when CG was a teenager, not a journalist.

The story is in this article https://archive.is/Xx2mz

She could have said "Cherie Blair asked me to leave. Euan said nothing, and didn't offer to arrange a taxi for me".

But she's a natural-born DM hack - always blame the nearest woman.

Good grief! I only mentioned Cherie Booth as an interesting aside.

CB isn’t the subject of this thread but since she’s come up, throwing a teenage girl out like that was horrible. Surely people aren’t defending that?

Euan Blair and Charlotte Griffith were teenagers.
Cherie Blair was the adult.
CB told the teenage girl to go to the kitchen to phone for a taxi. The taxi company refused to send a cab.
She had to ask the Downing Street police officers to find her a taxi.

That doesn't reflect well on the adult in the house, male or female.

The story was, as part of CG's history of dealing with PH, probably unnecessary, but helped her explain her social background and also presented another opportunity to point out that journalists (in this case her father) did not always jump at the easy story.

It has veered off the subject but what it did do was send me down a rabbit-hole looking back at the Blair era.
(Feel free to ignore - only including for general interest in press freedom.)

One of Tony Blair's last speeches before standing down as Labour leader was a diatribe against the 'feral' press. He complained that news was being sensationalised, and that news organisations were not reporting parliament in the way he thought they should.
TB speech

Unsurprisingly the papers were unimpressed by this. I've read the DM and Guardian responses - can't access the Telegraph (link isn't working)
Response to speech from papers

It's also interesting (in context of this thread) that recent government archives released show that Tony Blair bitterly regretted his introduction of the Freedom of Information Act.
TB and FOI

Peter Jukes is today having a disagreement on X with Julie Bindel that has seen him being asked by JB to justify, or apologise and retract his accusation (which to the best of my knowledge is a 'guilt by association' accusation that has no legs0 or she will regard it as defamation.

Peter Jukes is an investigative journalist and co-founder of Byline Times, which was heavily involved in the ANL case if you recall. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that Byline Times and PJ are now exposed to significant legal and professional risks following the High Court verdict, and I really don't think PJ needs to get into any more legal bother right now.

I just don't get why some people expose themselves to this level of financial and reputational risk. Is it ideological?

I think it is very much ideological, @AnAutumnCrow.

Interestingly, given the discussion above, also in Matrix Chambers is Hugh Tomlinson, KC.

He is said to be the author of the Inforrm blog (International Forum for Responsible Media), mentioned in one of the articles above as referring to PH and DL's statement as 'unusually strong'
Inforrm blog
Annoyingly, their 'About' page gives you little information.

More importantly, he is the current chair of Hacked Off.

He also has a significant history in obtaining injunctions for celebrities
https://archive.is/hwS9B
and gave evidence to Leveson, calling for the establishment of a Media Standards Authority
H Tomlinson Leveson

Leveson has just been given a peerage btw. Handy for Doreen Lawrence to nab him in the tearooms.

I do hope several people chat to her in the tea room.

Indeed!

This is his Matrix cv

The latest edition of Private Eye has a long piece on the trial and is particularly excoriating about the bouffant one . Also notes that EJ had announced his intention to play at 2 big one offs shows this autumn.