Duke of Sussex & Others vs ANL: thread 5

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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

I hope we’ll know a bit more about which way the wind’s blowing by Wednesday/Thursday from how combative or otherwise the rhetoric is in court, and be able to deduce from that if it’s all being taken care of from afar or not.

There may also be claimants’ statements afterwards, which might give a feel of whether anyone’s in fight mode or it’s all being portrayed as water under the bridge.

That’s assuming the Mail and other media report on it. I hope they do, in detail - I think it’s intriguing. And I just can’t get my head around those huge sums of money the claimants have flushed down the toilet, knowing they had no concrete proof, especially after Burrows first retracted his witness statement in March 2023 (which hit the headlines, so they all must have known how shonky the case was back then).

‘The judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, observed that Harry and his fellow claimants “may need to adjust their expectations” regarding the use of Burrows’ evidence.’

Judge Nicklin let them proceed to bring their evidence if they wished, but the claimants knew they didn’t have any.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/29/witness-in-prince-harrys-case-against-daily-mail-owner-unreliable-say-lawyers

Sir Simon Hughes. No, I don’t think he’s loaded. Just ‘comfortable’.

But he seems to have known the timeline was being fudged to try to escape the limitation rule, so I have somewhat muted sympathy if so, daft man.

Yes thankyou autumn ! That’s his name 😁 , I admit I have very little sympathy for any of them! , I’m just curious about how it will work?
just my own opinion, but I think they all knew exactly what they were up to and proceeded because they thought that ANL would fold Like the others did!!! Easy pay day ! , I’m glad that they now face the consequences of their own greed .

Simon Hughes did Law at Cambridge and was called to the Bar in 1974. He's not unacquainted with the law & might just be expected (even if not his specialist subject) to be able to , with research , examine the merits of the case. Perhaps the dog ate his homework.

Oh he was aware! There was evidence that they all knew that articles were being planted in byline , so they could pretend they had only just noticed, thereby trying to get around the time limit!!
they all , one by one , sat in a court of law and lied their asses off!! , I imagine that nicklin knew this too !
unfortunately U.K. courts do not allow a judge or solicitor to dance around singing “ liar , liar , pants on fire “

Liz Hurley will be fine - shes an incredibly successful business woman worth about £50million.

Judge Nicklin let them proceed to bring their evidence if they wished, but the claimants knew they didn’t have any

If it comes to it, @anautumncrow, Harry will probably blame the judge for allowing the case to go forward in the first place

On paying the costs I've always believed Charles will still be subbing him so it would be no surprise to learn he'd paid for this too, but whether we'd ever know is something else, given all the "sealing" and "making things go away" the institution has arranged

I think the optics would be really bad for Charles to bail out Harry while leaving DL, SF, SH. the 3 less wealthy claimants to pay.

Simon Hughes was the one who was given an official warning by the judge regarding his rights not to answer questions that might incriminate him

Was he the one the judge cautioned against perjuring himself? Can't see Nicklin showing much cost-mercy there.

@AnAutumnCrow There are several issues with what the claimants wanted to present in court.

Firstly, Harry et al wanted their day in court. If they didn’t, they would have settled. They didn’t.

They then had to make a case but it ended up being difficult as they were relying on what they thought happened, instead of evidence. They then clutched at straws for evidence to back up the case. GB was a wholly unreliable witness in court and dubious before. However Harry et al want the case to go to court so what is their legal team going to do? Numerous pay outs has been secured via litigation before this case The legal teams have the option to say no, we are not proceeding. Settle. Or they do the best they can with the cards they are dealt. These turned out to be poor but the claimants could have withdrawn. There certainly are cases where claimants are advised to settle or walk away because the cost of losing is vast. These claimants were never going to do that so the case goes to court and they get their allegations, with no evidence, heard in court. It’s how the justice system works. Yes, they were stupid but they wanted to be heard and will pay the price for that.

Or maybe he misunderstood being “called to the bar” and ended up at the local Red Lion 🤔

🤣

Maybe they all did, including Sherborne. Would explain a lot!

I agree with this - many of the claimants are angry and irrational - they were unable to emotionally see clearly and happy to blow up everything when emotionally dysregulated. Fine if that’s from your own pocket and you can pay for it…..not if you go out with a begging bowl to feed your ego.

ANL were never going to settle and the claimants couldn’t tolerate withdrawing as a sensible feasible realistic option.

Firstly, Harry et al wanted their day in court. If they didn’t, they would have settled. They didn’t

But I thought they did try to settle very soon before the case was heard, @DJPJ - and that ANL refused?

Same here.

https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/prince-harry-daily-mail-trial-settlement-b3011267.html

Harry didn’t find Sherborne, Sherborne found Harry.

Sherborne and others decided to go after ANL, and rounded up a bunch of useful idiots to pay for it.

Those useful idiots should be directing their ire at the Hacked off team / Sherborne and not Judge Nicklin.

I think some were dishonest and scheming, rather than emotional/ irrational.

Yes, I think that is one important factor to remember in this case.

The claimants were angry/irrational and wanted their day in court - yes, clearly.
They believed that ANL had done wrong and wanted to bring them down - almost certainly.
They were also carefully recruited by a group of people led by Hugh Grant and Evan Harris, funded by Hacked Off and Max Mosley's Nazi money.

DS has been involved with Hugh Grant in opposing the DM at least since Leveson that we know of (and most likely before).
He met PH in EJ's house in France in 2019, and persuaded him to leave the case he was already pursuing against NGN (jointly with PW) and instead pursue it with him (DS). PH thereafter has stayed with DS for his cases against MGN and ANL.

The claimants previously knew that ANL would not settle, and indeed that ANL had applied to have the case thrown out for lack of evidence. I suspect that the late attempt to settle in December was a sudden panicked realisation that the warnings that Judge Nicklin had been giving throughout the hearings had a good basis in fact.

I believe KCIII would cough up the lot on condition that Harry signed a legal agreement to stop pursuing all this nonsense in the courts, quit the RAVEC pursuit and just shut up generally whenever he was near a man in a wig. I'd pay this fee if I were the King and my KC's and judges were being called into question by my own son. Money talks and money silences. The latter more frequently.

I'm most surprised by Simon Hughes given his background. Utter folly.

A legal agreement would be used as proof of being silenced. As the royal family would be very unlikely to go to court on a breech of a legal agreement with Harry it really wouldn't be worth the paper it's written on.

I think it’s in the royal families interests for Harry to be financially reduced going forward.

@Puzzledandpissedoff Yes. An unrealistic attempt was made. I believe they all could have walked away though. We will never know if they were advised to do this or not. Perhaps they were but they certainly were very keen to have their allegations heard in court. Settlement doesn’t have to mean money - it can be an agreement to not pursue something further and not make further allegations.

Maybe he's trying to please them.

@bluegreygreen Yes it’s true Sherborne and others have made a stellar living out of these cases and won a vast amount of damages for clients. It’s inevitable he and his Chambers would be the “go to” barristers and Harry would have known this. His solicitors instructed the barristers. They could have used different barristers but they went with the ones who have represented the big names because they themselves were big names. However they get a choice. To do nothing, to go to court and which barristers to use. They are not people with no access to advice but probably liked the success rate of Sherborne and the KCs at the chambers.