Duke of Sussex & Others vs ANL: thread 6

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This is the sixth 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 (AW).

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, following the Consequentials hearing 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
Thread 5

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

Summary judgement

Full judgement

Aren’t ANL costs high because there were a large number of claims submitted by the defendants? Instead of just settling under the weight of so many claims, ANL thoroughly examined them, hence the high costs.

I think that's a lot of it, and the trawl through years of data, etc.

The reason the claimants were asking Judge Nicklin to cap the indemnity costs at around £20 million was that that amount was close to the original estimate that ANL had made for their costs, during one of the original costs hearings.

There isn't currently a breakdown of why the costs have escalated from £20m to £34.5m.

Judge Nicklin is saying that it would be unfair to cap the costs just because of the original estimate, especially given how the litigation was conducted by the claimants, and that the costs judge will assess ANLs costs and ensure they are reasonable.

Sorry - was responding g to Basilisk. I was trying to say that although the Claimants had four barristers, one of them probably outgunned the rest. So was there anyone on the Claimants’ team who could effectively challenge DS’s view of the case?

(forgot he wasn’t a Q C. )

And of course, the Claimants may not have listened to DS , however much sense he spoke about the prospects of the case

@damemaggiescurledupperlip I don't know whether the claimants only dealt with DS nor what he told them. Had it been me I would have been asking DS and probably the other barristers - Is there anything about this case which means it won't go our way , compared to the eg the Mirror case. I guess we won't know what discussions took place - it was just a thought.

One I agree with heartily

The Claimants submit that a cap would avoid years of expensive wrangling and would conserve court resources.

Um... I think he should have fairly pointed out that this point that the claimants could have easily avoided years of expensive wrangling and conserve court resources by not bringing a claim with no evidence in the first place.
If they wrote that with a straight face then they're doing better than I would have.

It's a good point - we don't know what the relationship between the barristers was.

I suppose we have to assume that they were all happy to proceed with the case, given that barristers are self-employed and can therefore make their own decisions about what instructions to take.

Certainly, if I remember correctly, there was one firm of solicitors that withdrew from the case.

Yes, that argument did seem a bit much, @MargaretThursday!

Hurley-Frost-Hughes all had contacts with Hacked Off/Evan Harris dating back over 10 years

I'm not sure we ever found out when Elton/Furnish had their initial contacts

It was later that Harry/Doreen were recruited
-Harry as the mouthy, useful idiot with direct contacts to certain journalists who would ensure maximum publicity for the case and who was at the time (2019) was considered a national treasure. Just so happened to meet Sherborne at Elton's villa in the South of France where Harry vented about the press to Sherborne.
-Doreen invoked a lot of sympathy as a tragically bereaved mother and justice campaigner. She epitomised Hacked Offs desire (stated by Evan Harris in Feb 2016) to recruit national treasures with dead children to invoke public sympathy for Hacked Off's campaign to sue ANL. Doreen was recruited by Harry to sue ANL in January 2022.

One of the things I had wondered throughout the case was how responsible the claimants were for the actions of their legal team.

When he was discussing authorities on indemnity costs, and laying out the principles to be used when making decisions on those costs, Judge Nicklin set matters out clearly.
The first paragraph is him referring to one of the prior cases; the second is one of the principles he is outlining:

22
A further point concerns the extent to which a party may resist an indemnity costs order by saying that the conduct relied upon was that of that party’s lawyers, experts or others rather than of the party personally. That is not, of itself, an answer. In Excalibur Ventures LLC -v- Texas Keystone Inc (No.2) [2017] 1 WLR 2221, the Court of Appeal considered an analogous argument advanced by litigation funders who sought to resist liability for indemnity costs on the basis that they had not themselves been guilty of discreditable conduct. Tomlinson LJ rejected that argument. He emphasised that conduct is only one factor in the overall evaluation, and that the character of the action and its effect on the successful defendant are also relevant: [21]-[23]. More specifically,
at [24], he held that where conduct is relevant, the successful party is afforded a more generous basis of assessment because of the way in which the opposing party, “or those in his camp”, have acted. A litigant may therefore be liable to pay indemnity costs because of the conduct of those whom he has chosen to engage, such as lawyers or experts, or those whom he has chosen to enlist, such as witnesses, even though he is not personally responsible for that conduct. The analysis is not dependent on agency: expert and factual witnesses are not agents of the party on whose behalf they give evidence.
It is a broader principle of justice. The party who deploys lawyers, experts and
witnesses as part of the conduct of the litigation cannot, when the litigation fails,
dissociate himself from conduct by those persons that has caused the other side to incur costs in meeting the case. That does not mean that every error by a representative or witness is to be visited on the party by an indemnity costs order. The Court must still ask whether, looking at all the circumstances, the conduct or circumstances take the case out of the norm. But where that threshold is crossed, it is no answer that the relevant conduct was that of those through whom, or by whom, the party chose to advance the litigation.

25(3)
The Court may take account not only of the conduct of the party personally,
but also of the conduct of those whom the party has chosen to engage or enlist
in the litigation. Excalibur supports the proposition that a party cannot
necessarily avoid the costs consequences of conduct outside the norm by saying that the conduct was that of lawyers, experts or witnesses rather than the party personally. The principle is not one of agency, but a broader principle of justice. The Court must nevertheless identify the conduct relied upon, consider how it affected the litigation and the opposing party, and decide whether it is just to treat it as part of the conduct of the case for which the litigating party should
bear costs consequences.

In other words, claimants are responsible for the manner in which their legal team carries out litigation.
So, as well as any moral or ethical principles involved in ensuring that there is evidence to support your case, there is also self-interest, as you may be penalised later if your legal team behaves improperly.

Well none of that will go down well with Harry, who is notorious for not taking responsibility and or blaming others when things go awry 🙄

Do we think H will ever get to the point where just because he says something it does not make it so?

I really hope he has taken the trouble to read ( or have read to him and explained in layman's terms ) Judge Nicklin's costs ruling.

I really hope he has taken the trouble to read ( or have read to him and explained in layman's terms ) Judge Nicklin's costs ruling.

And the original judgement?

Thank you for all of your hard work OP. Much appreciated 💐

Those who asked about Hacked Off.
This was one of their stances last month.
I haven't seen any response at all to the judge's comments from yesterday.

"Jacqui Hames: The Mail has not been exonerated. Evidence of unlawful behavior remains, and the need for Leveson 2 is as strong as ever." https://www.hackedoff.org/blog-posts/to-people-like-paul-dacre

They appeared to distance themselves somewhat following that initial response.

"Press launch disinformation attack on “Hacked Off” following Mail judgment" https://www.hackedoff.org/blog-posts/press-launch-disinformation-attack-on-hacked-off-following-mail-judgment

I personally did think Leveson inquiry part 2 was needed and disagreed with the press lobbying against it. The first one costing the govt 5 million seems small fry compared with this court battle - shame the complainants couldn't have just paid the money to Matt to fund part 2 😉

For anyone like me, new to the thread, who wants a dumbed down insight into where it went wrong with Gavin Burrows, 60 minutes it's actually 20 😉 do an interview with him here

Apologies for my scepticism earlier on the thread. I was like a pp's mum(!) and went Occam's razor - so would clearly have ended up as hapless as these have (although I am still amazed DL didn't abandon ship when given the chance, am surprised they all didn't drop the case when judge pretty much told them to and was surprised they hadn't pressed for recusal if they genuinely thought there was a conflict of interests. Harry's a liability). Hugh Grant settled against the Sun because of risk of paying both sides costs. Amazed he didn't tell Liz to drop it.

I always remember that Coogan ended up 30K down when he was vindicated and it was still a "relief".

Reddit for dumdums like myself...

"The key detail that sets the case against the Daily Mail apart from the cases against the Mirror and The Sun : r/SaintMeghanMarkle" https://www.reddit.com/r/SaintMeghanMarkle/comments/1ql4j4p/the_key_detail_that_sets_the_case_against_the/

Thanks again blue 👏🏼

Yes that too - although they have had time to do that. Granted they had to wait until H had written and published his whitewash statement before they could begin. That's my assumption anyway as not even he would have published that if he'd had any understanding of the judgement. That said I haven't allowed for the H factor.

It seems that neither the claimants not their legal team have come out well in this. I am sure barristers take on cases and lose them , but can still get some respect for doing their utmost with an unwinnable case. This doesn't seem like one of those instances to me.

@SummerNocturnal

Hugh Grant settled against the Sun because of risk of paying both sides costs. Amazed he didn't tell Liz to drop it.

I made Hugh Grant aware that I had his personal information via his trusted inner circle.

He took the payment off The Sun a year later. He would have bitten their hands off. All that sob story about how his lawyers had warned him that he basically had no choice but to settle or face costs if he did not match the Sun’s offer was a con. He’s an Oxford Scholar not the half wit he would have us believe.

Welcome back @SummerNocturnal.

Glad you've had the opportunity to look at things and reconsider. If you're ever stuck for something to do, following the case through the threads is an interesting read 😀

Thanks for that intel Gwen. So why on earth would he not have told her to get out while she could?!
Unless Elton's paying for her too.

I went down a Reddit hole blue (I wasn't gone that long!) because the Chilean lawyer on there dumbs it down for me 😂 but I am going to make a brew and start from the beginning. Thanks again for all your updates, making it easier to follow 💐

Maybe Hugh did tell Liz to drop it but she either didn’t listen or was persuaded to stay in by the others. Perhaps Elton even offered to cover her costs from that point in order to keep her in the group of claimants.

He wanted Liz in because she’d won a previous case against the Mirror.

They all thought the Daily Mail would settle out of court but when it was clear they would not, if the complainants withdrew, they would have had to pay all the DM’s costs up to that point.

I'd be amazed if he does / did either, @BasiliskStare

On everything we've seen and heard from Harry himself I'd have thought that being told he'd lost - no matter how carefully phrased - would be enough to produce a princely tantrum, and that the reasons would be of scant interest

@SummerNocturnal Remember that the entire scheme was dreamt up by Hugh Grant and Hacked Off in the beginning.

Why would he tell people to pull out when they'd been working to recruit them?

https://archive.ph/VDjFe

@bluegreygreen thanks for sharing. The judgement is very well written and only an imbecile would consider the judgement "a complete and obvious white wash".

I'm glad the judge calmly addressed Harry previous petulant outburst. I wonder if the claimant's have a WA group?? I can't imagine there is much friendly chatter as likely to be blame and recriminations. "You told me it was an "all you can eat place" so I could have as much calamari as I wanted".

DS has high profile however the ANL legal team aren't attracting such publicity but surely they must be celebrating (all the way to the bank!)

Thank you @bluegreygreen for this thread and for yours and others stirling work of simplifying the various twists and turns!.

I imagine the claimants will be fighting like rats in a sack over how the costs are split between them. I am sure that even though the Judge said he had put to one side the ridiculous statement by PH and DL the other claimants won't see it like that.

What an unholy mess of the Claimants own making, personally I not only think they should meet ALL the costs of ANL there should be a surchage/tax/fine on top for the sheer waste of the Court/Justice system time.

I am glad ANL won and the Claimants case was exposed for what it really was.

Well, yes, the tax payers have forced out a lot for this nonsense and vanity. Because we pay for the courts