RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Prince Harry, Elton John and others must repay a £9.54 million ($13 million) legal bill following the loss of their hacking lawsuit against the Daily Mail .
In July, London’s High Court dismissed claims made by the Duke of Sussex, John and others that alleged the Daily Mail published stories after unlawfully obtaining information by hacking into their messages, tapping landlines or acquiring medical records.
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In a ruling on Friday (Aug. 21), Judge Mr. Justice Nicklin detailed the “conduct of the trial” and criticized the case put forward by the claimants’ legal team. In particular, he noted “the objective breadth and character of the case as advanced, the speculative and inferential foundation on which many serious allegations rested, the maintenance of serious allegations after the evidential position should have been reassessed, the way in which unpleaded or unsupported allegations were put at trial, the failure to withdraw serious allegations when they were no longer being pursued, and the cumulative effect of those matters.”
An initial payment of £9.54 million will be due by Aug. 28, and Nicklin said that was making an exception order to force the claimants to pay up to £34.5 million ($47 million) in costs incurred by the Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the Daily Mail ’s publisher, because of the way the case had been brought.
In the case, the claimants made unsupportable claims that leading executives from ANL had lied to the Leveson public inquiry, a 2011 inquiry into the practices of the British press following the News of the World’s phone-hacking scandal. “The case as pleaded and pursued went substantially beyond what was necessary for the adjudication of the individual claims,” Nicklin wrote.
John and their co-claimants have until Oct. 2 to attempt to launch an appeal. The interim payment will come ahead of future hearings to decide ANL’s legal costs in full.
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