Prince Harry appeals loss in phone-hacking case against Daily Mail
The Duke of Sussex is appealing against his High Court defeat in a £50 million ($97.2 million) phone-hacking case against the publishers of the Daily Mail.
Prince Harry, together with five co-claimants, has applied to the Court of Appeal for a new hearing after losing the privacy action against Associated Newspapers in July.
Sir Elton John, his husband David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost and Baroness Lawrence are also appealing.
Simon Hughes, the former Liberal Democrat MP, is the only one of the original claimants choosing not to appeal.
In a statement, Callum Galbraith, their lawyer, said: “We confirm that the claimants have today filed applications with the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal the judgments of Mr Justice Nicklin in respect of his dismissal of their claims and the indemnity costs order.
“The claimants respectfully disagree with those unprecedented decisions, which they consider to be legally and factually flawed.”
The group sued Associated Newspapers Limited in relation to allegations of phone hacking, blagging private medical records and other alleged illegal information gathering.
Associated strongly denied the claims, which were heard at an 11-week trial in London earlier this year, with Justice Nicklin dismissing all 97 claims made by the original seven claimants in a judgment on July 7.
He said their entire case was based on inference rather than evidence, and accepted the journalists’ “lawful explanations” for how their stories were obtained.
In a decision in August the judge ruled that the group had to pay £9.5 million within seven days as an initial contribution to the publisher’s costs before further hearings to determine the total sum.
He also granted a rare indemnity order, which lifts the cap on how much the claimants must contribute towards the publisher’s costs. Such orders are only granted in cases where there has been “unreasonable” conduct or behaviour that takes it “out of the norm”.
Prince Harry and the other claimants are also appealing against this order. They have an insurance policy that covers them for £16.2 million, creating a potential shortfall of £18.3 million to pay the total legal costs.
It will now be up to the Court of Appeal to decide whether to grant a new hearing. Prince Harry and his co-claimants will need to convince the court there are reasonable grounds to believe that Justice Nicklin’s decision was wrong.
The decision on granting a full appeal hearing will be down to a single Court of Appeal judge, basing his or her decision on written submissions from the claimants’ legal team. If permission to appeal were to be granted, a full hearing would take place in front of three judges.
The Duke criticised the judge’s decision at the time, describing the 426-page ruling as a “whitewash”.
In a joint statement after the ruling, the Duke and Baroness Lawrence said: “It is a complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected. However, the lengths to which the court has gone to exonerate the Mail is as shocking as it is totally unwarranted.
“It feels here like one rule for the newspapers and another for the claimants. While the claimants presented evidence, Mail journalists simply gave denials, and the court chose uncritically to believe them, even in the face of inconsistencies, contradictions and blatant untruths that were obvious to neutral observers in court when compared to the documents.”
Paul Dacre, the editor-in-chief of Associated, condemned the “confused and angry” Duke for bringing the failed claim, saying it formed part of a “conspiracy against the free press”.
He said Prince Harry had been persuaded by campaigners to launch a “trumped-up action” that should “never” have reached trial.
The London Telegraph revealed last month that the law firm at the heart of the failed claim had gone bankrupt.
Mark Thomson, who founded the company Thomson Heath & Associates in 2009 and owned 100 per cent of the shares, served as a co-ordinating solicitor for the whole group and personally represented Frost and Hughes.
In total, seven lawyers from the firm worked on the case.
Telegraph, London
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