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 recall being warned by home insurers when setting up my first home that if you under-insure your house & contents, the insurer can decline to pay out anything at all in the event of a claim.

I don’t know about legal insurance though. I’m assuming it’s different?

@MeetMeOnTheCorner - yes, it’s Harry’s own goal. He’s wasted his own (and everyone else’s) money and time to position the Mail as vindicated.

In terms of the interim payment “ANL, which also publishes The Mail on Sunday, has asked for more than £9.9 million as an interim payment ahead of future hearings to decide its legal costs in depth.
Antony White KC, for the publisher, said in written submissions that there was “no dispute that Associated is entitled to payments on account of its costs” from the group of household names, with the court later told this would be a “global” figure which could be split between the group.

Lawyers for the group of household names, also including David Furnish, Sadie Frost, Liz Hurley and Sir Simon Hughes, said the interim payment should be just over £7.9 million.”

I imagine the £7.9m interim payment the claimants want to make is set at that level because it would be covered by the insurer so they wouldn’t need to dip into their personal wealth - yet. With only about 10 days to make the payment determined by the judge they will all need to be ready to stump up an extra £2m between them if the judge agrees with the ANL request. I doubt Doreen has £300k lying around to make her share of that £2m. If she is the one without insurance as well then she has a real problem. EJ could cover her costs without blinking but if he and the others are annoyed about the statement DL and Harry put out after the judgment then perhaps they will say Harry needs to help her out.

@AnAutumnCrow It’s likely the insurance was set at the previous costs hearing sums. Anything above was an unknown and usually insurance is based on a known amount. You know the value of a car, a house or your engagement ring. Costs run up by your adversaries in court are not known. The sum the judge set previously is.

I am a very long time lurker and have been watching the case and thread with interest. I hope that the costs are high enough for each individual that it hurts them in the bank account. Court cases like this one was a self indulgent exercise and wasted huge amounts of court time, money and was merely a distraction for some people to vent spleen and the outcome, if high enough, should deter others. It is shameful

That's right, AnAutumnCrow, as some friends of mine found out to their cost.

They had a devastating house fire that completely destroyed their historic five-bedroomed house. The house had to be re-built in its entirety, and town planning rules required that it be rebuilt "to the identical"... a very costly job. The family were living in a caravan in their garden for almost two years. Also, the ruins of their house were looted the morning after the fire, so things that might have survived the fire, like small statues/busts, were taken.

The insurers declined any liability because when the expert examined the house plans they deemed that a very small room in the eaves, which had been declared as a box room - and which was being used as such - actually qualified as a sixth bedroom so the family had been paying the incorrect premiums.

The husband had a high position in a large international company that was itself a big customer of the insurer. He told them that his company would be taking their business elsewhere if the insurers couldn't come to some compromise arrangement. So the insurers did budge quite a bit - iirc the insurers covered about 60% of the rebuild, in the end. But without that leverage I hate to think where the family would have been!

Insurers can wriggle out in so many different and surprising ways, as I have found out myself over the years. Pet insurers, house content insurers, building insurers, they are all the same. The minute they send their "expert" around you know you're in trouble, and cover will be denied. Once, for me, it was because of the wind speed on the night of the storm that caused my house to short and several expensive appliances to self-combust. At that wind speed, apparently, it was the local municipality that was supposed to reimburse me but it was up to me to pursue them in the courts.

Someone I know owns an insurance company and is minted : a Bentley, a Porsche, a Ferrari plus two LR defenders and a car for his son all while living in a stately home.

So, not to derail, the insurers will be looking for every loophole they can find to avoid paying out anything.

I sit on a charity’s board, we needed our legal insurance but the insurer claimed we had not notified them of certain elements of a small insurance case and threatens to void our insurance when the claimant sued us, luckily we were able to produce evidence that that we had provided evidence of this (minor accident) at the premises at the time. The case was later withdrawn but we always sent any little thing to them eg someone slipping, even though our insurance said ‘we had discretion’

The shenanigans around Burrows makes me think there is not a chance in hell an insurer will pay up, they would have demanded the plaintiffs pulled the plug a long time ago otherwise as they would have assessed (with clear heads not clouded by greed and revenge) that the case was fatally flawed without any chance of succeeding

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@shockthemonkey What you use a room for has no bearing on an insurance claim. We have changed our house around considerably and taken out walls and made the space more open and also added rooms so layout has substantially changed - it’s nothing like the house we bought. It is adequately insured though based on sq ft, quality of fixtures and fittings and cost of similar build quality. Any historic house has a very high rebuild cost - it’s not a box on an estate. When insurers have an issue, it’s nearly always under insuring and frequently lack of insuring for the quality of the rebuild, eg hand made bricks, clay roof tiles etc .

Regarding insuring for court costs, they are far more difficult to as ascertain. A house rebuild is not that difficult. Other people’s costs surrounding a court case are. The insured has no control over them or what the judge might agree for costs based on the outcome and conduct of the case.

Not quite right, @MeetMeOnTheCorner , their insurance was based on square footage and number of bedrooms. There are special rules for rooms under the eaves - both as to whether they count as bedrooms and as to how to calculate their surface area. But I won’t derail any more with all the details.

Suffice it to say insurers will be insurers. They want to continue making the kind of money @SheinSussex describes 😡

No one cares about bedrooms or not bedrooms normally - it’s all about valuing the rebuild costs. Under insurance is a big issue in older properties. Yes - Harry et al might have the same issue! To bring it back to the thread!

We fudged our house insurance as we had 6 bedrooms and insurance was cheaper for houses with 5 bedrooms or less. So we had an upstairs office and fortunately have now moved to a house which genuinely has 4 bedrooms.

Anyway, let’s hope the claimants haven’t fudged their own insurance policy.

Can we stop talking about house insurance now please?

In the grand scheme of things I don't think 9 mil is a lot of money to these people, except DL, LH is apparently worth $50m. I actually don't think that the court costs are going to impact them that much, I think losing the case has probably been the real stinger. Happy to be proved wrong and following with interest...

I find these celebrity worth tbings crazy.

Liz Hurleys company accounts show 10k in her bank account. This is her production and bikini company. She owns a 6m house which she bought with Sharne Warne (not the working farm as she sold that)

I don’t see any evidence of her being worth 50m to be honest, so I can’t see her being able to magic up 2 million.

i can see her happy to join in an ANL shakedown for a big pay day to boost her coffers as she had to buy out Shane Warne when they split.

Even if those "celeb x is worth 50m" websites are remotely accurate, which I doubt, there's quite a big difference between being worth a few million and actually putting your hands on a million in cash.

Liz Hurley’s wealth is her farm worth 6m , her residuals, and whether Estée Lauder pays her any money these days.

Sadie Frost downsized when her kids moved out from a house selling at 8m to a cottage which cost less than 1m, I’m guessing most of the sales proceeds went to Jude Law.

i don’t see how either of them can easily access 2+ millions along with Simon Hughes or Doreen lawrence

that means Elton and Harry are stuck funding the 10m due soon. As Harry is notoriously tightfisted I think EJ will be paying the whole bill,

EJ will be paying the whole bill

I just can't see this.

Am I right in thinking ANL could just choose to pursue one or two of the claimants for the entire funds? Would make sense for them to target Harry and Elton in that case.

I’m sure that EJ is not going to want to give ANL more money than he absolutely has to (although he may help out LH)

The tight-fisted ‘Prince of England’ is going to have to cough up his fair share (if this means dipping into his children’s inheritance then that’s what he’ll have to do) and if he has offered to cover DL he is going to have to make good on that as well.

Remember that there are different parts to the bill: individual and common costs.

Each of the claimants is severally liable for the individual costs that ANL have run up defending their specific case, and jointly and severally liable for the common costs.

So, each claimant will have to pay at least the amount of his/her own individual costs, in addition to a share of the common costs.
As they are jointly and severally liable for the common costs, any one of them could be pursued for the entire amount. If that becomes necessary, ANL is more likely to pursue someone who has the capacity to pay the entire amount.

Edit to add: this of course does not include the claimants' own costs.

PH won’t be able to access any trust monies, will he, esp anything in his children’s names? He will have to turn to cash and liquidatte-able assets like houses, surely?

I’m sure a lot of his inherited wealth is in trust form

I think that would depend on whether the parent(s) are trustees and/or what the T&Cs of the trust are.
(assuming that the children do have trusts in place right now)