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

The Duke of Sussex and other celebrity claimants accusing the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday of unlawful information gathering are “clutching at straws”, a court has heard.

Prince Harry is among seven high-profile claimants including Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley alleging Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) committed “grave breaches of privacy” over a 20-year period.

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

White said in written submissions that the celebrities had “leaky” social circles and that a “pattern of misconduct… is simply not made out”.

The claimants have accused the publisher of “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering” for stories between 1993 and “beyond” 2018, including through private investigators and blagging.

In their joint opening statement on Monday, they accused a string of senior Mail and Mail on Sunday journalists of being “engaged in or complicit in the culture of unlawful information gathering that wrecked the lives of so many”. ANL has denied all wrongdoing.

Joining the duke in bringing the lawsuit against ANL are:

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

On Monday, Sherborne had set out the claims of Frost, Baroness Lawrence, and Prince Harry – who said the alleged behaviour had left him “paranoid beyond belief”.

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

In his opening argument for the publisher, White said the claimants were “clutching at straws in the wind and seeking to bind them together in a way that has no analytical foundation”.

He said a “striking feature” of the ANL’s defence was that it had been able to obtain an explanation from almost all of the journalists named in the legal action of how they had sourced their stories, to the best of their memory.

“The fact that they are willing and able to do so speaks volumes of the culture” of ANL, he argued.

White also argued that the allegations were “very serious” against the reporters, all of whom would have to be lying to the court about their sourcing – which he argued was improbable.

He also made the case that the group was relying on evidence of payments to private investigators before or after an article’s publication, but often did not detail what the investigators were actually being paid to do.

He claimed they were instead relying on evidence about the investigators from previous cases in which Prince Harry took on Mirror Group Newspapers and News Group Newspapers, the publisher of The Sun.

He said this was problematic because such “generic” evidence had been “struck out” of the case by the judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, in 2025.

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

White also noted that ANL defended the claims “on limitation grounds” – meaning that they claim they were brought too late.

The publisher was unsuccessful in its attempt to get the case thrown out in 2023 on these grounds. Lawyers for the claimants successfully argued that new evidence had come to light, and they did not know how information was being covertly acquired at the time.

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

It is Prince Harry’s third major court battle accusing newspaper groups of unlawful behaviour.

In December 2023, he won 15 claims in his case accusing Mirror Group Newspapers of unlawfully gathering information for stories published about him.

In January 2025, the publisher of the Sun newspaper agreed to pay “substantial damages” and issued an apology to the prince, over claims of unlawful intrusion into his life.