Prince Harry ‘clutching at straws’ with claim against Mail publisher, court told

The Duke of Sussex and other high-profile plaintiffs who accused the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail of illegally collecting information on Sunday were “hung on the stick”, a court heard.

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

Defending the publisher, Antony White KC argued that the reporters behind the stories offered “a compelling account of the articles’ pattern of legitimate sourcing”.

White said in written statements that celebrities had “leaky” social circles and that “a pattern of abuse did not clearly emerge.”

The plaintiffs accused the publisher of “clearly, systematically and consistently illegally gathering information,” including private detectives and bullshitters, for stories between 1993 and “beyond” 2018.

In their joint opening statement on Monday, they accused a number of senior Mail and Mail on Sunday journalists of being “involved in or complicit in a culture of illegal doxxing that has devastated the lives of so many”. ANL denied all wrongdoing.

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

On Monday, David Sherborne had put forward the claims of Frost, Baroness Lawrence and Prince Harry; They too said the alleged behavior left him “incredibly paranoid”.

Prince Harry, Hurley and Sir Simon were present at the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday for the second day of the trial, which is expected to last nine weeks.

In his opening statement on behalf of the publisher, White said the plaintiffs were “grabbing at straws in the wind and trying to tie them together in a way that has no analytical basis.”

He said a “striking feature” of ANL’s defense was that it was able to obtain an explanation from almost all of the journalists named in the case, as far as their memories would allow, of how they had sourced their stories.

“It says a lot about ANL’s culture that they are willing and able to do this,” he argued.

White also argued that it was unlikely that journalists facing “very serious” allegations would all lie to the court about sourcing.

He claimed the group relied on evidence of payments made to private investigators before or after an article was published, but often did not detail what investigators were actually paid to do.

Instead, he claimed, they relied on evidence from investigators in previous cases involving Prince Harry’s Mirror Group Newspapers and News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun.

He said this was problematic because such “generic” evidence was “removed” from the case by the judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, in 2025.

The judge ruled at the time that evidence that a journalist at one newspaper used an investigator for illegal purposes could not be used to prove that a reporter at a different newspaper who used the same investigator had also done something wrong.

The allegations in the case emerged in 2022, when attorneys for six of the seven plaintiffs said they had evidence that private investigators were wiretapping or listening to phone calls.

In its written submissions, ANL said the only direct evidence supporting this claim came from a statement by private investigator Gavin Burrows, in which he acknowledged the use of a number of illegal techniques. He has since said his signature on the affidavit was forged.

Prince Harry’s legal team said the claim was “wild and unfounded”. Burrows will be called to testify at the hearing.

ANL said it was “inconceivable that the plaintiffs will now be able to redress the unreasonable allegations made in that witness statement”.

White said journalists use standard reporting skills rather than private investigators. The publisher’s case statement said there were “strong positive cases” for each alleged incident and that a witness was able to identify the source of “nearly every article.”

White said Stephen Wright, the Daily Mail crime journalist at the center of the allegations against Baroness Lawrence, had good connections within the police who provided information.

For example, he said that the news about the government launching a public inquiry into his son’s murder in 1997 came from a tip given by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw to the newspaper’s editor, Paul Dacre, and not from a phone tap.

Royal correspondents Katie Nicholl and Rebecca English said they attended parties on the outer fringes of the duke’s social scene and received information from friends.

White suggested that publishers in various countries provided information for the stories, including those about Prince Harry and his then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy and the birth of Sir Elton and Furnish’s son.

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

White also noted that ANL defended the claims on “limitation grounds”, meaning they claimed they were made too late.

Privacy lawsuits generally must be filed within six years of the alleged breach, unless victims can show that they cannot sue at that time.

This is a civil case, so there is no jury and the judge will decide the case on his own.

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.