Britain’s Prince Harry, singer Elton John and five other high-profile figures’ privacy lawsuits against the Daily Mail began on Monday with the start of a trial at the High Court in London.
Here’s everything you need to know about the trial and what’s at stake.
Who is suing?
Prince Harry, King Charles’ younger son and the Duke of Sussex, music legend Elton John, John’s husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence and former British lawmaker Simon Hughes are suing Associated Newspapers Limited.
They formally launched the action at the High Court against Associated, the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, in 2022.
What is the case about?
The seven claimants say that journalists commissioned private investigators who committed unlawful acts between 1993 and 2011.
These included hacking voicemail messages on mobile phones, tapping landline phones and obtaining confidential information, such as flight details and medical records, by deception — known as “blagging.”
Among those named as being involved are some senior current and former journalists, including editors of national newspapers.
Associated denies all the allegations, calling them “preposterous smears” and says the claimants’ social circles “were ‘leaky’ and their friends and friends of friends or associates did regularly provide information to the press.”
What has happened so far?
Numerous often-heated hearings had already been held to decide whether the case should proceed.
In November 2023, Judge Matthew Nicklin ruled the case should go to trial, rejecting Associated’s argument it should be dismissed because it had been brought outside a six-year time limit.
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The following year, the British government gave permission for the claimants’ legal team to use documents submitted to a 2011-12 public inquiry into press standards, held in the wake of public anger over revelations of phone-hacking by journalists on the Rupert Murdoch-owned title, the News of the World.
However, Nicklin in October ruled Harry’s lawyers could not use allegations about Kate, the Princess of Wales and wife of his older brother Prince William, as part of their case, and also limited their cases to specific claims.
What will happen at the trial?
Harry and all the other claimants will appear to give evidence and face questions from ANL’s lawyers. John and his husband are likely to give evidence remotely.
For Harry, it will be the second time he has appeared in a witness box, having become the first royal to do so for more than 130 years during his successful phone-hacking lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mirror newspaper in June 2023.
Among those due to appear to give evidence for ANL are current and former editors, senior journalists, and most notably Paul Dacre, the Mail’s longstanding former editor and now the editor-in-chief of DMG Media, the publishing arm of Daily Mail and General Trust.
He is set to be their initial witness as Associated’s lawyers said they would send senior figures “over the top” first.
What are the key issues?
Nicklin has been clear that the trial should focus solely on specific articles and events and should not become a second wide-ranging public inquiry into newspapers’ behaviour.
Two elements will be key: did the investigators used by the Mail papers employ unlawful means? And did the claimants know they had a case years ago, meaning their lawsuits are out of time?
Associated have cast the whole case as manufactured and funded by opponents of the press including actor Hugh Grant, the late motor racing boss and privacy campaigner Max Mosley, and other figures, some of whom are now part of a “research team” assisting Harry’s lawyers.
They say a “Daily Mail Plan” was hatched years before, meaning that some of the lawsuits should fail on time limitation, while witnesses would say that the articles were legitimately sourced.
The claimants’ lawyer David Sherborne argues that the Mail had given sworn evidence at the public inquiry that they were a “clean ship,” saying they were running a “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil defence.”
He says its denials were not true and that Associated had spent more than 3 million pounds ($4 million) on private investigators over a 20-year period.
There were “masses and masses of missing documents,” Sherborne said, adding that despite Associated destroying invoices, they were able to build an inferential case.
Investigator Gavin Burrows
One big factor will be how the judge views evidence given by private investigator Gavin Burrows, who is central to many of the allegations, and without whose testimony Associated says much of the claimants’ allegations fall away.
He gave the claimants’ legal team a witness statement in August 2021 in which he said his work for Associated had included bugging landlines.
But he later provided further declarations to Associated’s lawyers, denying these claims and saying that he believed the statement given to Harry’s lawyers had been “prepared by others without my knowledge”, was “substantially untrue”, and that his signature had been forged.
