Prince Harry, Elton John and five other claimants have been ordered to pay U.K. tabloid publisher Associated Newspapers Limited $13 million (£9.54m) in initial legal fees, a month after their privacy invasion case was dismissed.
The pair, alongside David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost, Doreen Lawrence and Sir Simon Hughes, failed to prove their 2022 claims against the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday publisher, Justice Matthew Nicklin ruled in July. The seven public figures could be forced to pay up to $34 million (£25m) following this first payment, per the BBC. They now have until Oct. 2 to request an appeal, but did have insurance in place for up to $22 million (£16.2m).
The group had accused the papers of various hacking, tapping and bugging methods for articles between 1993 and 2011. The unlawful information-gathering trial lasted 11 weeks, with a reported price tag of about $53.5 million (£40m) in related legal costs.
ANL called the update “a devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors and executives” in a Friday statement. The company had previously denied any wrongdoing, calling the allegations “preposterous” while insisting that the stories involved came from lawful sources.
“I think it’s fundamentally wrong [for ANL] to put us through this again when all we required is an apology and some accountability,” Prince Harry, meanwhile, shared in his prior testimony. “It’s a horrible experience and the worst bit of it is, by standing up here, they continue to come after me and make my wife’s life an absolute misery.”
This was the Duke of Sussex’s third and final lawsuit against U.K. tabloid publishers: He received a “full and unequivocal apology” from the Murdochs’ News Group Newspapers in January after a settlement; he won a similar phone hacking case against Mirror Group Newspapers in late 2023.
