Prince Harry and Co-Claimants Ordered to Pay £9.5 Million Interim Costs After Mail Privacy Case Defeat
Prince Harry and six co-claimants must pay an initial £9,544,355 to Associated Newspapers by 28 August, a High Court judge ruled on Friday, one month after they lost a landmark privacy case against the publisher of the Daily Mail.
Mr Justice Nicklin said the claimants and their advisers had been on notice since the hearing that this would be the date for payment on account — an interim sum ordered before the final costs bill is settled. He told the court he was "quite satisfied" that an order for indemnity costs should be made, a ruling that typically applies when a court finds a claim was brought unreasonably and allows the winning side to recover a higher proportion of its legal costs than the standard basis would permit. Hello!
The group sharing the costs includes Sir Elton John, David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Sir Simon Hughes. They had alleged that Associated Newspapers — which also publishes the Mail on Sunday — engaged in unlawful information gathering, including phone tapping and blagging private data. After an 11-week trial, Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed every claim in a 436-page ruling, concluding that none of the seven had proven the allegations.
The judge accepted Prince Harry's evidence at trial in January but noted, "As with each of the claimants, Prince Harry has limited evidence to give on the contentious matters in dispute." A spokesperson for Associated Newspapers called the decision "another overwhelming victory for the Mail and its journalism." Hello!
The court has not yet decided how much of Associated Newspapers' costs the claimants must ultimately pay. Further hearings will determine the final sum. What is already known is the scale: the publisher previously stated its costs of defending the proceedings were £34.5 million, which the court described as "exceptionally high." Total legal costs across both sides are expected to reach around £50 million. The Guardian
The interim figure of £9,544,355 landed between the two sides' positions. Associated Newspapers had asked for £9,950,624.37 as an interim payment; the claimants' lawyers argued it should be just over £7.9 million. The court declined, after "careful consideration," to impose a cap on the amount of costs the publisher could recover. Hello!
The financial picture is complicated by a shortfall in the claimants' insurance. Their coverage applies to £16.2 million of Associated Newspapers' £34.5 million bill, leaving a potential gap of roughly £18.3 million. The publisher had also exceeded its approved litigation costs budget by more than £18.6 million, according to BBC reporting from July. BBC News
For Prince Harry, who has pursued multiple legal actions against British newspaper publishers, the ruling adds a substantial, and still unresolved, bill to the outcome. For the other claimants — among them some of Britain's best-known entertainers and public figures — the costs are shared across the group rather than falling on any one individual.
What makes the sums here unusual is the court's own language. When a judge calls a legal costs figure "exceptionally high" and then declines to cap the recovery, the claimants are looking at a final bill that could climb well beyond the interim £9.5 million due next Thursday. The mechanism is straightforward: the losing side pays the winner's costs, subject to assessment. The numbers are anything but.
