Costs of Prince Harry’s £38m legal battle ‘manifestly excessive,’ say judges
The estimated £38 million cost of the Duke of Sussex’s legal battle with the publisher of the Daily Mail has been branded “manifestly excessive” and “disproportionate” by High Court judges.
Prince Harry, Baroness Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, and Sir Elton John are among seven high-profile claimants suing Associated Newspapers over the alleged misuse of private information.
A trial has been pencilled in for January 2026 and is expected to last nine weeks.
Unlike the deal agreed this week between the Duke and News Group Newspapers (NGN), the publisher of The Sun, there appeared little chance that the two sides would reach a settlement, the judges acknowledged.
While NGN has made more than 1,300 payouts to prevent such claims reaching trial, Associated does not consider such a deal a possibility, given its “entrenched positions”.
It emerged in November that the case was forecast to cost more than £38 million, with the claimants proposing to spend around £18.7 million and the publisher £19.8 million.
However, Mr Justice Nicklin and Judge David Cook “had little difficulty concluding that such sums were manifestly excessive and therefore disproportionate”.
In a ruling handed down on Friday, the pair ruled that the claimants should spend around £4.1 million, and ANL around £4.5 million, on the case.
They were particularly critical of certain solicitors’ hourly rates, which reached £740 – a figure “well outside” the guidelines.
The claimants have accused Associated of alleged unlawful activities such as hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars, “blagging” private records, burglaries to order and recording private phone conversations.
The publisher denies the allegations and has told the court the claims were “lurid” and “simply preposterous”.
The judges noted that the claims were “really rather simple” when compared with the different types of litigation that come before the court. Each involves a selection of newspaper articles alleged to have been obtained by unlawful means.
“This is not a subtle question,” the judges said, pointing out that the claimants – also including Sir Elton’s husband David Furnish, actors Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley and former Lib Dem MP Sir Simon Hughes – would either win or lose on each one.
They warned that celebrities would be treated in the same way as any other litigant. “The fact that these claimants are well-known, and the litigation high-profile, does not affect the issues that must be resolved,” they said.
‘Reasonable and proportionate’
The ruling warned that there was “considerable overlap” between each of the claimants’ cases, with many different firms of solicitors instructing the same barristers.
The judge also said both parties had failed to sufficiently take into account the fact that many of their lawyers were also involved in the Leveson Inquiry, the Duke’s claim against Mirror Group Newspapers, which he won in 2023, and his claim against NGN, which ended after five years with a “full and unequivocal apology” on Wednesday, meaning that they were not “starting from scratch”.
A costs management hearing allows the court to set “reasonable and proportionate” parameters for the costs of the litigation. Either side can exceed the budget but would then be unable to recover the full amount if the other party was ordered to pay their costs.
