Prince Harry arrived in the UK less than 24 hours ago and he’s already done more public appearances this week than the Prince and Princess of Wales combined. LMAO, I swear to god. Here are some photos of Harry today, making his second public appearance in 20 hours or so. His first was last night at the premiere of Misan Harriman’s Shoot the People. Misan is close to Harry and Meghan, and clearly, Misan does not care one iota about pissing off the left-behinds.
Today’s event was the 14th Invictus Games Foundation Conversation: From Policy to Practice at Chatham House. Harry is taking part in a broader conversation about veterans, and the Minister for Veterans (Clive Bailey) was part of it. I always wonder what British government officials really think about the royal family’s vindictive behavior towards Harry.
Speaking of vindictiveness, Harry and his co-plaintiffs have lost their years-long lawsuit against ANL/The Mail. The court found that the claimants “failed to prove their pleaded allegations” and that the Mail could have gotten all of their reporting through legal means. As in, the Mail argued that every story they published contained information acquired through legal means, not bribery or blagging or phone-hacking or payoffs. And the court said “sounds good.”
Prince Harry has lost his long-running lawsuit against the publishers of the Daily Mail.
The British royal, who now lives in Montecito, California, was among a group of high-profile figures who filed suit in 2022 alleging they were victims of unlawful information gathering.
The others were Elton John, David Furnish, actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence and former politician Sir Simon Hughes. The court said all the claimants had failed to prove their claims.
The group alleged that as well as hacking their phones, journalists from the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday tapped landlines and bugged houses and cars. Publisher Associated Newspapers had strenuously denied the claims.
An 11-week trial took place earlier this year, with costs estimated to be in the region of $40 million.
Coincidentally, Harry is in the U.K. this week for the one-year countdown to the next Invictus Games, the sports tournament he created for injured veterans, which is set to take place in Birmingham in July 2027.
Yeah, this is depressing. This is the first press lawsuit Harry has lost – he won or accepted settlements on all of his previous lawsuits. I honestly didn’t think he and the other plaintiffs would lose.
Update: The Mail/ANL issued a statement, calling the verdict/judgment an “overwhelming victory for the Daily Mail and its journalists, and for a free press generally.” The huffy statement also claimed that the Mail’s “decent and hard-working journalists” had to watch as their integrity was “terribly impugned.” The lawyers also say that the case “wasted so much valuable court time and more than £50 million in legal costs. We will look to resolve outstanding issues, including the recovery of the costs we have incurred while defending ourselves against this egregious litigation.”
Photos courtesy of Getty Images, Backgrid.
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- London, UNITED KINGDOM Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, arrives at Chatham House in central London to attend the fourteenth Invictus Games Foundation Conversation: From Policy to Practice, as part of the One Year to Go celebrations for the Invictus Games Birmingham 2027 Pictured: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex BACKGRID USA 7 JULY 2026 BYLINE MUST READ: Zak Hussein / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- London, UNITED KINGDOM Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, arrives at Chatham House in central London to attend the fourteenth Invictus Games Foundation Conversation: From Policy to Practice, as part of the One Year to Go celebrations for the Invictus Games Birmingham 2027 Pictured: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex BACKGRID USA 7 JULY 2026 BYLINE MUST READ: Zak Hussein / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
Baldy will be behind this.
I’m trying to trust the Courts and the Law but we have our own Supreme Court disaster 😵💫
My heart sank… And now I’m furious.
Establishment stitch-up, indeed.
I could point out that Charles’ top two media and organizational staffers are all former Daily Mail editors. I don’t think he could weigh in verbally with an independent judge but there must have been subtle systemic pressure. Same as on the judge that ruled against him for the security and for paying for his own security. Those were legally fairly open and shut wins for Harry…but somehow he didn’t win. I think the Palace subtly makes it’s will known and then the judge gets to decide if the case in front of him merits defying the kings agenda. Just my opinion….it is, after all, a country with a KING on the money, the mail, etc. (god the monarchy is so out of date for this day and age)
Doubtless there is pressure, but you’d still have to explain why this judge ruled this way in this case, and the other judge ruled the other way in the other case.
“I think the Palace subtly makes it’s will known and then the judge gets to decide if the case in front of him merits defying the kings agenda.” I agree. I think the judge successfully justified his decision from a legal perspective. But from a political perspective, I think it came down to:
Judge (sits in smoke filled private club). Well, this is of course a terribly difficult decision. One that makes judges past, looking down from their portraits, sympathize. Whatever feelings mean… (takes a sip of Cognac)
UK Establishment member (could be aristo, politico, press baron, billionaire, whomever) Indeed. It is so very difficult. One could say, for example that His Majesty may need to be reminded that the future of the monarchy needs a certain patina of justice. Or that the press, given the failure of the Leveson Inquiry needs to be reined in a tad, reminded of their place? But one could also say…the conservative approach is, as always, to change as little as possible. (stares off into the distance, takes a sip of his own glass)
Judge (puffs on a cigar) Quite.
AAAND SCENE. Clearly I watch too many movies!
Carte Blanche for the vicious British Media to keep on using every illegal means possible to smear, lie about, and ruin people just for clicks. Lord Rothemere will pop his finest bottle of champagne before taking the phone call from the King’s office, congratulating him.
Ethics, morals? Not for the British Media.
You’ve said exactly what I wanted to. This court verdict is sickening. The British gutter press will just carry on destroying people’s lives with no fear of the consequences, just to sell newspapers.
Damn. I really hoped Harry would win. It’s a sad day for him and his family personally, and a sad day for Britain because it means the tabloids are emboldened to continue doing what they have always done.
Not a lawyer but in essence the judge said: There is a high burden of proof, and Harry and his fellow claimants didn’t meet it. Harry said X, ANL said Y and given no hard evidence (like a paper trail), the judge said he sided with ANL. Don’t believe what the DM is crowing, that the judge said that what the DM did was proper journalism, or that individual journalists were exonerated. The judge did not say that.
I’m curious as to why the Daily Mirror lost and ANL won, given that the legal argument by Harry’s team was the same: inference (given what was published, the ONLY way that this could have happened was the information was obtained through illegal means). But that’s for another day…
We might have to know the judge’s particulars (politics, relationships, etc.), to tell why.
Yeah, I’ve been expecting this. A while back I read some articles that were not from biased places and they said that there just wasn’t enough hard evidence. Or that the evidence wasn’t as strong as in the other cases. It seemed strong to me though? So yeah.
I figured they were gonna lose. I didn’t like the way things sounded, so not surprised. It sucks though because no way in hell they got every single story legally.
Basically the judge said: All of that could have come directly from the palaces. And it could! We all know how the Mail worked, why all the Emails were scrubbed, and so on. But that’s not enough for hard evidence.
This sucks. But I hope the past can now be put behind him & he can focus on the future.
Their claims were very difficult to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, especially after that PI rescinded.
Their argument seemed to be there was no way they got the info they did without using illegal means, but they couldn’t prove any specific examples of the illegal means. It sucks, it means the British media will keep doing it and getting away with it. These defendants will be fine, but lots of regular people will have their lives upended.
“A shadow of a doubt” is not the standard; it’s probably “a reasonable doubt”.
The civil standard is a balance of probabilities which is in essence 50+1.
Haven’t read the decision but if the issues are relating to not enough hard evidence, that judge is making a choice here.
Of all the papers the DM is the worst out there but this will boomerang on the royalists sooner than they realize.
It actually means more likely than not based on the evidence. It’s not numerical. But the judge appears to have tweaked this to suit his judgment.
I agree – I knew it would be hard after that PI took back his statement (which he’d made on camera multiple times). Of course he was hugely paid off to do that. It’s stinks of a rat.
So apparently there are Judge Cannon’s and Alito’s and Thomas’ in the UK. America is not the only place the judicial system is compromised.
What! It’s obvious that the information was obtained illegally but it had to be proven so, effectively Harry and the others lost. Ugh, the likes of Richard Eden are going to be even more insufferable than they are already.
Oh that sucks, given BPs response as to why it wasn’t ” appropriate” to have him stay, I thought they were telegraphing a win. But maybe as I initially thought it was punishment for even bringing the case to begin with. This is his last case though correct, and he’s won four out of five or settled? I think that’s a win rate that most lawyers would be happy to accept.
I’m sure the media will try to spin this as only his case, and ignore all the other people that were part of the suit. But I wonder if this isn’t a bit of a pyrrhic victory for the British media. They won’t give him security, he has no more court cases, his paternal family is trash, and his maternal family is willing to travel to see him.
They are really minimizing the amount of time he’ll be coming to England. And coming for Scotty’s and well child awards once a year isn’t going to be enough to sustain them. And Megan has made it very clear that she is not interested at all. And despite what they say covering him and Meghan from afar after the US media has gotten the initial scoops isn’t to their benefit.
I wish this news surprised me, but it doesn’t. Clearly the court has been “influenced”, just like RAVEC. We see how things work over there. But at least Harry got to see the information he needed in order to know just how low down and dirty his ‘family’ really is.
I wonder how big that payoff was?
Harry needs to just keep doing what he’s doing and living his life. Living well is the best revenge. These people have tried to break him and Meghan but they will not succeed.
The claimants’ case was largely based on testimony from former private investigator Gavin Burrows, who allegedly gave a statement to Prince Harry’s legal team in 2021 saying he had been commissioned by the Mail on Sunday to carry out phone-hacking and blagging hundreds of times between 2000 and 2005.
But by the time the trial came around Burrows was claiming this was “absolutely incorrect” and gave a fresh statement in support of Associated Newspapers’ defence. He said the signature on the original statement was fake
PrincPrince Harry privacy judgment is victory for Mail (developing story) https://share.google/wZjdRQmHIbRwRLoQD
Regarding the money – that the claimants have to pay court costs – I’m sure this was already prepared for in the form of a pool to which the claimants paid in, then financed (eg insured, by bonds, etc). So it’s not like the claimants have to write a check, or that Harry will now go begging on the street or anything so don’t believe anything you read about the amount it will cost Harry or anyone else. That’s standard procedure in cases like this (which is why it’s curious that Hugh Grant dropped out claiming it was because he didn’t want to be on the hook for costs in case he lost; again, at the level of Harry, Elton John etc it’s financed in advance)
Well, now he can put both the DM and the royal family behind him. That was a lot of crap hanging over his head – there are so many positives in the new life he has built.
That’s a great way to look at this! While it might be difficult for awhile, this and the mess with his father, will hopefully allow Harry to break ties with the UK for good, excepting the Spenser family and a few charities.
Our civil standard of proof is “on a balance of probabilities” ie more likely than not. I need to read the judgement in full though as something in the summary seemed a bit odd when I heard it on the news.
Apparently a contributing factor, said the judge was the strong claims. So, “balance of probabilities” may work when it’s say you suing the corner shop for unripe fruit. But given the seriousness of the claims that Harry and his co-claimants made, the burden of proof was very high. But again, not a lawyer
The standard never changes for civil claims. Otherwise there is an appeal.
It seems like the investigator changing his position late in the game made the evidence issue more difficult. Likely someone got to him.
Nic is correct, no change to the burden of proof, but an executive summary is not the judgment.
Could be an appeal ground.
Same here. But I’d have to read the judgment in full.
However, now we know where the stories come from. The Royals!
“Associated Newspapers has denied the allegations and arguing that its journalists relied on legitimate sources for information, including friends and royal aides.” I very much doubt Harry and Meghan’s friends tell the british gutter press anything.
Now we know the Royal Family does the chirping. Associated Newspapers admitted to using Royal aides as a source, which means only one thing. The call comes from William or Kate’s office 100%.
Just a point of information but you will see idiot numbers tossed out for costs. The court never awards full indemnity unless there is evidence of malice and there was not here. It will likely be an agreed upon number and likely around one million.
Yes, costs are usually party to party, which is around 66% of costs.
Oh interesting! I thought the losing party had to pay all legal fees. Good to know.
Disappointed in this outcome but he has other wins under his belt against the tabloids.
Seems like they didn’t have enough evidence. Sometimes that happen. He will be okay but the people that are not wealthy will not. Daily Mail will continue to do what they always do except they will hide it more. Maybe now he can get on with his life. Everyone knows the Daily Mail is scum so no love lost there. No hiding away just get out there full force and he and Meghan continue to do what they do.
This totally sucks. But Harry likely learned what he needed to learn through discovery and he has no doubt now who’s behind the torment of his family.
That’s a good point.
I agree. He probably feels that the information he was able to confirm from what he learned during discovery was well worth the aggravation even though he lost the case. Sometimes a loss is still a win.
I really hope that, unfortunate as this verdict is, it causes Harry to rethink filing any more media lawsuits. And I don’t know if he’s contemplating filing more. But I think he’s subconsciously used the media mistreatment to distract from his family’s ongoing mistreatment. It’s been a diversion and has kept him hopefully thinking that he can reconcile with his father at least. The recent behavior of his father and the loss of this lawsuit should concentrate his mind on where the real problem lies.
He said himself he was done with lawsuits and this was the last one. Just like he said that he wasn’t starting any new charitable organizations and they were going to put everything under the umbrella of Archewell Philantrophes. They seem to be looking forward, it’s the media that try to make it seem like they’re always looking backwards.
It’s why the media and the Royal commentators relitigate articles and issues from 2017-2018 and 2019 all the time, and find new angles to complain about the Oprah interview, Spare and the docuseries. Like I said above it’s a bit of a pyrrhic victory for them. After this week, and Well Child in september, he doesn’t need to come back until next summer. I’m sure they’ll be doing a ton of other stuff, but the British media will be playing catch up.
That doesn’t make sense or is it projection. He’s won or settled the other cases, there’s no indication he’s doing any others. What’s that got to do with his father? Some of these comments are just strange. It honestly sounds like most people don’t listen to his own words and make stories up in their heads.
Harry will always stand up for what is right, and I’m sure he’s proud of that, despite the court loss. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him release a statement today. Just sucks he’s on UK soil today with all the other BS going on. I was already done with this trip before it started.
https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/lawrence-and-others-v-associated-newspapers-limited/
This is the 400 + pages of Judge’s analysis of court case evidence.
Thanks LD!
This is unexplainably. How can all seven plaintiffs have lost their cases?
This outcome seems to be bought and paid for. How can you decide, after approving to start a mounts-long trial, that the time limitation has passed?
In the end, I believe that The Fail was never gonna lose this case in ‘His Majesty’s Court’, given the involvement of so many Daily Fail reporters in Charles’ Comms Team. They worked their way into Charles’ Household for this very reason. Really said. What a sell-out of a father Charles is.
I figured they lost when they suddenly had the ruling during this trip. I mean, it was coordinated to be delivered the exact moment Harry started his first IG event at 2 pm… not a coincidence. They imagine these scenarios in their heads: they are in battle with Harry… Chuck looked like a fool in a tank yesterday.
All this means is that Chuck was planning to humiliate Harry with his wife and children… nice guy… not.
Anyways, I read somewhere that they had gotten insurance in case they lost.
I think their real aim is to overshadow the Invictus Games. First, it was security and accommodations, and now this.
On the positive side, no one is buying that Harry should not have security.
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I hoped against all hope. There were indications in the trial by the judge were he was going with this.
But I am still gutted by the scale of the loss but also especially for Baroness Doreen Lawrence.
Today’s announcement makes Charles look even worse as he’s publicly turned his back on his own son and still briefing to the Mail. As Lainey Gossip wrote yesterday who sides with the Mafia against their own son? T Markle and C Windsor collaborate with the MoS and Mail to hurt their own offspring? How cruel of both so called fathers. Normal fathers protect, nurture, love and support their offspring and bar the wolf from the door not invited him in and feed your children to him to save yourself!!
Hacked Off group reacts to judgment – criticising ‘devastating intrusion’ and calling for new inquiry
Hacked Off, a press reform campaign group, has reacted to today’s judgment.
The organisation said that while the claimants didn’t do enough to prove unlawful means of sourcing “the fact that the articles were deeply intrusive, and in some cases sexist and homophobic, was not in dispute in the case”.
Hacked Off board director and victim of phone hacking, Jacqui Hames, said:
“The stories and conduct which formed the basis for the claims against the Mail were devastatingly intrusive, and included medical details, information about children, and other deeply invasive behaviour and coverage.
“The Mail’s conduct fell well short of professional standards in the press, yet nothing has changed in the last twenty years and news publishers like the Mail still remain outside any independent form of regulation.
“Action to address standards in the press is long overdue, and must be a priority for the incoming administration.
“The courts are not the appropriate vehicle for investigating the allegations of wrongdoing against the Mail in their fulness, and the judgment was clear in stating that, focusing on a handful of individual articles, the Court had not made findings on whether illegality was widespread at the Mail.
“Now only a public inquiry can get to the bottom of what really happened.
“Leveson Part Two must proceed without further delay.”