Prince Harry has addressed the “unwarranted” verdict after losing his legal battle against the Daily Mail.
On Tuesday, July 7, the Duke of Sussex received a major blow during his ongoing trip to the UK, when a federal judge ruled against him by dismissing his four-year long privacy lawsuit against the Daily Mail publisher.
In the verdict, Mr. Justice Nicklin dismissed every claim made by Harry, noting that the duke and the other claimants failed to prove their allegations that the publisher had illegally gathered their private information, resulting in the dismissal of the duke’s £50 million privacy claim.
Breaking silence on the verdict, Prince Harry released a scathing statement, blasting the “shocking and unwarranted” ruling.
Prince Harry issues statement on Daily Mail lawsuit verdict
In a lengthy joint statement with Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Prince Harry stated, "We came to Court seeking justice and accountability. But we have received neither. This judgment represents a complete reversal of the position which previous Judges have taken in relation to the hacking claims successfully brought against both News Group Newspapers and Mirror Group Newspapers (who were represented by, at the time, the Judge who made this decision).”
"Generic findings about various private investigators that were held by the Courts in these parallel claims to have carried out unlawful activity at the very same time in relation to similar stories and well-known individuals have been wholly ignored. The fact that this Court has chosen to dismiss them represents an inconsistency which is hard to understand or reconcile with common sense, or the evidence heard in the court room itself.”
He added, "It is a complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected. However, the lengths to which the Court has gone to exonerate the Mail is as shocking as it is totally unwarranted.
"When the Court says there is not sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, despite the documents showing otherwise, then one does wonder how justice was ever going to be achieved. One need not look past when a private investigator the Mail used actually admitted on tape to having unlawfully blagged Baroness Lawrence, or when a journalist recorded the name of the private investigators she used to find out about highly sensitive medical information (that even the Mail was too worried to publish) or when another private investigator emailed one of the journalists with the actual British Airways seat number and ticketing details for a young girl simply visiting her boyfriend in return for payment.”
The statement further noted, "It feels here like one rule for the newspapers and another for the claimants. While the Claimants presented evidence, Mail journalists simply gave denials, and the Court chose uncritically to believe them, even in the face of inconsistencies, contradictions and blatant untruths that were obvious to neutral observers in Court when compared to the documents.
"We presented to the Court evidence which we believed was compelling at the time and remains so now. We would like to thank our legal team for all their hard work and all the witnesses who were brave enough to come forward in the pursuit of justice,” the statement concluded.
Prince Harry is currently in the UK to kick off the one-year countdown for the 2027 Invictus Games, set to take place in Birmingham.
