Harry made ‘paranoid’ by Daily Mail publisher’s unlawful actions, court hears

A court heard that the Daily Mail and Mail’s alleged illegal collection of information on Sunday left the Duke of Sussex feeling “incredibly paranoid”.

Prince Harry is among seven high-profile plaintiffs, including Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, who claim the newspaper’s publisher, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), committed “serious breaches of privacy” over a 20-year period.

According to his lawyer’s written statement, the prince felt that “his every move, thought or feeling was being tracked and monitored just to make money for the Mail”.

ANL said the duke’s social circle was “known as a good source of leaks” to the press and repeatedly denied the plaintiffs’ claims.

Antony White KC, representing the publisher, said it was “a striking feature of the case that none of the articles were the subject of the plaintiffs’ complaint at the time of publication”.

“The pattern of abuse that plaintiffs seek to establish has not been clearly established.”

Joining the Duke in the lawsuit against ANL are:

• Actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost
• Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish
• Sir Simon Hughes, former Liberal Democrat MP
• Baroness Doreen Lawrence, campaigner whose son Stephen Lawrence was killed in a racist attack in south London in 1993

Prince Harry was in the courtroom on Monday for the first day of the trial, which is expected to last nine weeks.

David Sherborne, representing the plaintiffs, quoted the prince as saying in his written statement that the newspapers’ alleged activity created “mistrust and suspicion”.

He said the “intrusion” was “terrible” for his loved ones and “isolated me.”

Sherborne said the illegal collection of information alleged in the Duke’s case related to 14 articles between 2001 and 2013.

The Daily Mail’s current royal editor, Rebecca English, was accused of “obtaining the exact airline seats, flight times and travel plans” of Prince Harry’s then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy in December 2007.

Sherborne claimed the information was obtained through private investigator Mike Behr, who is accused of suggesting he could “put someone with him” on the flight to South Africa.

White, on behalf of the broadcaster, said English “absolutely denies using Mr Behr to illegally gather information” and that the allegation “is not supported by the evidence before the court”.

He said the prince’s social circle was “known and known at all important times… to be a good source for leaks or disclosure of information to the media about what he was doing in his private life.”

It said all articles were “completely legitimately obtained from information provided in various ways through contacts of responsible journalists”, including press officers and journalists, freelance journalists, photographers and previous reports.

White also said the duke discussed his private life in the media and that information about his life was provided by Palace spokesmen.

Sherborne told the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday there was “systematic and sustained use of illegal information gathering” and that there was “no way” the details reported in some articles could have been obtained legally.

In joint opening statements, the plaintiffs accused a number of senior Mail and Mail on Sunday journalists of commissioning and using information illegally collected from private detectives.

They said they were “involved in or complicit in a culture of illegal doxxing that has ruined the lives of so many.”

Sir Elton and Furnish accused ANL of “stealing” their son Zachary’s birth certificate “before we had a chance to see it ourselves” and accused the broadcaster of “infringing medical information”.

In written statements, White said his allegations were “unsupported by any evidence before the court and are completely unfounded.”

Mail on Sunday journalist Katie Nicholl was accused of obtaining private information about Frost’s private life – including the termination of her pregnancy, which the actor did not even tell his mother.

Sherborne, who showed that “Susie” of ELI, a private investigation firm, provided information on this matter in the ledgers, added that there were payments recorded days later as “KATIE NICHOLLS EMERGENCY ENQ” and “K NICHOLLS SEARCHES”.

Baroness Lawrence said she felt targeted as she sought the truth about her son’s murder.

She said she felt she had been “victimized again” and that she “wasn’t able to suffer the injustice even for a day in the face of what was happening specifically”.

His allegations relate to five articles published between 1997 and 2007 by the Daily Mail’s veteran crime reporter Stephen Wright.

The allegations include that he paid thousands of dollars in cash for “private contacts with Stephen Lawrence” and “private investigations”, and that he arranged for “well-known braggart” Christine Hart to call Baroness Lawrence pretending to be a journalist from the Guardian because it was believed she would be more likely to speak to him.

Baroness Lawrence said she was “angry that the Mail was more interested in questioning me about how I found out about what he had done to me… then threatened to question me about all this at the hearing rather than apologising, investigating what he had done and finding out the truth about what happened.”

White said the allegations against the reporter were “completely denied” and “unsupported by available evidence.”

Sherborne, meanwhile, said the ANL maintained its “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil defence” and claimed that during the 2012 Leveson public inquiry into press culture, practices and ethics, the broadcaster maintained there was no illegal activity.

He said ANL “knew they had skeletons in their closet” because it investigated the company’s use of phone hacking between 2003-05 and found evidence of the technique being used in stories.

ANL has repeatedly denied the allegations, calling them “appalling” and “inconceivable”.

“In connection with almost any article that purports to be the product of phone hacking or wiretapping, the Associated may call a witness or witnesses to explain how the article actually originated,” White said.

The lawyer added that “the pattern of abuse that the plaintiffs sought to establish was not clearly established.”

This is a civil case, so there is no jury. The judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, will decide the case alone.

This is the third major court battle in which Prince Harry has accused newspaper groups of illegal conduct.

In December 2023, he won 15 claims in his lawsuit accusing Mirror Group Newspapers of illegally collecting information for stories published about him.

In January 2025, the publisher of the Sun newspaper agreed to pay “significant compensation” and apologized to the prince over allegations of unlawful interference in his life.