• Analysis
Prince Harry files Daily Mail phone hacking appeal after losing case
Prince Harry and five other claimants, including Elton John and Doreen Lawrence, have filed applications with the court of appeal for permission to appeal after Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed their phone-hacking claims against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail.
Court staff confirmed on Friday that the applications had been lodged at the court of appeal, and a statement issued the same day by a spokesperson for the claimants announced the move. The group is seeking permission to appeal both the dismissal of the claims and the indemnity costs order that followed.
Who is appealing
The six claimants in the case are:
- •Prince Harry
- •Doreen Lawrence, mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence
- •Singer Elton John and his husband, David Furnish
- •Actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost
In the Friday statement, the spokesperson said the group was seeking "permission to appeal the judgments of Mr Justice Nicklin in respect of his dismissal of their claims and the indemnity costs order".
The claimants respectfully disagree with those unprecedented decisions, which they consider to be legally and factually flawed.
The July ruling
Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed the case in July, ruling that the claimants had not proved any information had been obtained unlawfully. His 436-page written verdict followed an 11-week trial.
In the ruling, the judge held that it could not be inferred that a story had been obtained unlawfully if there remained a legitimate and realistic legal way of sourcing it.
The allegations at trial
During the trial, barristers for the claimants alleged that private investigators, freelance journalists and staff at Associated Newspapers had carried out voicemail interception, landline tapping and blagging - obtaining information by deception.
Associated's legal team rejected the allegations, describing the claims as "lurid" and "preposterous". The publisher's lawyers said Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday journalists gave a "compelling account of a pattern of legitimate sourcing of articles", citing friends, leaky social circles, press officers, spokespeople, prior reporting, freelancers and other outlets' stories.
The costs
The claimants faced a legal bill of more than £50m after losing their case. In August, Mr Justice Nicklin ordered them to pay £9,544,355 within seven days as an initial contribution to the publisher's costs, pending hearings to determine the total sum.
After the verdict, former Mail editor Paul Dacre called the case a "conspiracy" orchestrated by press regulation campaigners to "destroy a paper". Harry and Lawrence said the verdict was a "complete and obvious whitewash", questioning how justice could be achieved when courts find insufficient evidence of wrongdoing.
The appeal applications have now been filed and await the court of appeal's decision on whether to grant permission to appeal.
