Prince Harry & celeb pals hit with first court bill of £9.5m after failed hacking case – ahead of return to UK

PRINCE Harry and his high-profile pals are facing a first court bill of £9.5million after losing their failed hacking case with the Daily Mail’s publisher. The Duke of Sussex, 41, was one of seven complainants – including Sir Elton John and actress Liz Hurley – who lost the battle with Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL). Prince Harry faces a huge court bill over his failed hacking case Credit: Reuters It comes ahead of his return to the UK with Meghan Markle Credit: Splash The group, which also includes campaigner Baroness Doreen Lawrence, claimed journalists hired private investigators to put listening devices in cars, blag private records and tap into private phone conversations. ANL strongly denied the allegations and argued the cases had been brought too late. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! Harry and the other claimants have now been saddled with an initial court bill for £9.5million – with more set to come. Today’s amount is an interim payment – with the court ruling the publisher can seek further costs. The court previously heard the group each took out insurance policies worth £2.7million — a total of £16.2million — before the 11-week trial. But ANL is trying to claw back legal costs worth more than £34.5million – meaning the claimants are short by around £18million. Judge Mr Justice Nicklin described the ANL figure as “excessive” – but declined to impose a cap. He also said the claims made by Harry and co were were “speculative and substantially inferential” and “lacked a proper evidential foundation”. Most read in The Sun High-profile claimants seeking damages included Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish Credit: PA Actress Liz Hurley, pictured at court, claimed her landline was bugged Credit: Simon Jones ANL welcomed today’s judgment and called it “a devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors and executives”. In a huge victory for Press freedom, the judge last month rejected every single one of the 97 allegations made by the Duke and his pals. He said the complainants had failed to prove their “serious” allegations of unlawful information gathering. Harry later slammed the ruling as “a complete and obvious whitewash”. But lawyers for the publisher said Harry’s team “abused their celebrity status” to pursue a case “well outside the law” and that their conduct had been “outrageous” and “unreasonable”. Today’s judgment comes after The Sun revealed how Harry and wife Meghan Markle will be returning to the UK – six years after Megxit. The royals have gathered for a summit over Harry and Meghan’s return Credit: AFP What the judge said in today's ruling Mr Justice Nicklin said the group undertook a “high-risk strategy” in their failed claims against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL). He added: “Allegations of the utmost seriousness were advanced before the evidential foundation for many of them had been established, and the case was then pleaded at the widest possible level to obtain disclosure and seek to substantiate the individual claims.” He continued: “The existence of such litigation does not confer a licence to turn every subsequent claim against a newspaper publisher into a wide-ranging investigation of that publisher’s conduct over many years.” The judge also said the “expansive” nature of the claims against ANL “imposed a substantial burden” on the publisher and required it to “meet allegations which were very serious in character and very wide in scope.” “The breadth of the case was not simply a matter of scale. It affected the whole character and cost of the litigation,” the judge added. He also said the claims were “litigation conceived and pleaded on an unjustifiably wide canvas”. Mr Justice Nicklin also found not all of the allegations were hopeless and that “some points had substance”, although the claims were largely “speculative at origin and depended substantially on inference”. He continued: “In my judgment, the cumulative effect of these matters takes the case well outside the norm. The conduct was unreasonable to a high degree. “The just order is that the claimants pay Associated’s costs of the action, save where costs orders have already been made, to be assessed on the indemnity basis.” Both seven-year-old Archie and Lilibet, five, are set to go to school in the UK in September. Prince William and Princess Kate were today pictured arriving at Balmoral where a secret summit is taking place with the royal family over Harry and Meghan’s shock return. It echoes the Sandringham Summit in 2020 when the Sussexes first announced they wanted to leave. During around two hours of cross-examination in January, Harry said he could not complain about some of the 14 articles in his case at the time “because of the institution I was in”. He also said in his written evidence that “knowingly false” information was added to stories to “put me off the scent”, to conceal unlawful methods, including voicemail interception. The duke, who flew into the UK from his home in Montecito, California, to give evidence, also grew tearful as he said the court battle had been a “horrible experience” for his family. As part of its defence, ANL said Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday journalists provide a “compelling account of a pattern of legitimate sourcing of articles”. This includes friends and “leaky” social circles, press officers and spokespersons, as well as previous reporting, freelance journalists and stories from other newspapers and news agencies. Associated Newspapers later hailed the judgment as “an overwhelming victory” and “a magnificent vindication of the Daily Mail’s journalism”. Editor-in-Chief Paul Dacre also said the “trumped-up” case was a “sinister bid” to impose statutory regulations on the Press.