Judge dismisses Prince Harry's privacy claims against Daily Mail publisher

In July 2026, Mr Justice Nicklin, a High Court judge in London, dismissed the privacy claims brought by Prince Harry and other claimants against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. The ruling came in a 436-page written judgment after a trial that lasted about 11 weeks.

The claimants, who included public figures, alleged that journalists or investigators working for the Mail titles had obtained private information unlawfully, for example through phone tapping, bugging or other illicit methods. ANL denied the allegations throughout. The judge found that the claimants had not proved that information was obtained unlawfully, so their case failed.

The judge also dealt with costs. He ordered that ANL's legal costs should generally be assessed on the indemnity basis, a more generous standard than usual that is applied when a court is critical of how a case was conducted. ANL put its costs at more than £34 million, and the judge questioned whether all of that sum had been reasonably incurred. An interim payment was ordered, with the final figure to be decided later.

The outcome was a major setback for Harry, who has pursued several cases against UK newspaper groups, and it led to the claimants considering an appeal.