PRINCE Harry on Tuesday lost his high-profile case against the Daily Mail’s publisher for alleged unlawful information gathering in yet another blow to the estranged royal as he begins a fraught five-day trip back to the UK.
A written judgement by London’s High Court published following an 11-week trial earlier this year said the “claimants failed to prove their pleaded allegations… the claims are therefore dismissed”.
The ruling was delivered as Harry attended an event in the capital, with Associated Newspapers calling it an “overwhelming victory” and a “magnificent vindication of the Daily Mail’s journalism”.
It said the court’s dismissal of “every single one of the 97 allegations made by the claimants” showed Judge Matthew Nicklin had “accepted the honesty of our journalists’ evidence on how they sourced their stories”.
Allegations that bugs had been placed in people’s cars and homes, calls listened to, and bank accounts had been illicitly accessed had been “lurid” and “preposterous” with “no credible evidence” ever presented, Associated said in a statement.
“The reputations of our decent and hard-working journalists were terribly impugned, and today they have been exonerated,” it added.
There was no immediate reaction from the prince’s spokesperson.
The ruling came shortly after Harry, the youngest son of King Charles III, arrived at an Invictus Games event in central London.
The prince launched the games for wounded veterans in 2014, and the next one will be held in Birmingham in July next year.
At the same time, his estranged brother, heir to the throne Prince William, was also in the city, visiting the London Welsh School to promote next month’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Harry will now face another court hearing on July 29-30, which could see him and the six other complainants ordered to pay substantial legal costs.
Associated said it had spent £50 million ($66 million) “defending ourselves against this egregious litigation”.
“We will look to resolve outstanding issues, including the recovery of the costs we have incurred,” it added.
The prince gave emotional testimony during the proceedings in which several high-profile figures, including singer Elton John and actor Elizabeth Hurley, accused the tabloid publisher of invading their privacy.
The case, the third and final one brought by the Duke of Sussex in his acrimonious legal battle with British tabloids, has further strained relations with the royal family.
Harry, 41, has also been involved in other legal spats, including over his police protection in Britain following his dramatic departure from frontline royal duties six years ago.
The prince, now living in California, arrived in Britain on Monday for a five-day visit expected to go ahead mostly without his wife and children after the family was refused police protection.
The trip, to mark the one-year countdown to next year’s Invictus Games, was meant to be his first family trip back to the UK in four years.
But a source close to the Duke of Sussex told AFP that Harry’s wife Meghan, son Archie and daughter Lilibet would not accompany him on the London leg of the trip after the family was refused a security detail.
Arrangements for the rest of the trip were still under consideration, the source said, leaving it unclear whether the whole family would visit but stay outside the capital.
It was also unclear whether the prince would meet his father during the trip.
He is last understood to have met Charles, who is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer, at the monarch’s London residence Clarence House in September 2025.
Harry and Meghan left Britain for North America in 2020 amid a bitter feud with his family, which worsened as Harry published his tell-all memoir “Spare”.
The prince has since said he wishes to reconcile with his father.
Last year, Harry said he felt unable to bring his family to Britain after losing a court case to have his security restored during visits home.
Harry has long blamed the media for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997 while trying to shake off the paparazzi.