Celebrity claimants – including Prince Harry – in the failed privacy action against the Daily Mail will have to pay costs on the indemnity basis, which leaves them facing a potential bill of £34 million.
In a judgment handed down this afternoon, Mr Justice Nicklin found the case brought by the seven claimants went ‘well outside the norm’ and its ‘conduct was unreasonable to a high degree’. While not every allegation was hopeless from the start, ‘standing back, the overall conduct and circumstances are clear'.
‘This was litigation conceived and pleaded on an unjustifiably wide canvas. With limited exceptions, it was speculative at origin and depended substantially on inference.
‘Serious allegations, including allegations amounting to criminal conduct, were maintained over a prolonged period and pursued up to and including closing submissions, in circumstances where the evidential foundation for many of them was inadequate, where some were inconsistent with contemporaneous documents, and where the claimants failed to take the steps that a reasonable litigant should have taken to narrow, withdraw or abandon allegations as the case developed.’
Last month, claims of unlawful information-gathering brought by seven claimants including Prince Harry the duke of Sussex, Baroness Lawrence and Sir Elton John, were dismissed following an 11-week trial. Associated Newspapers sought its costs to be assessed on an indemnity basis as the claim pursued by the claimants was a ‘long way from ordinary and reasonable litigation’.
The claimants argued that an order for indemnity costs would be ‘unjust’. The litigation had been approached by the claimants ‘in good faith, under the burden of decades of intensive, intrusive media scrutiny into their private lives’.
Read more
The publisher sought a payment on account of £9,950,624.37 – 65% of Associated Newspaper’s incurred pre-budgeted costs (£5,281,497.27) and 90% of Associated’s budgeted costs (£4,669,127.10).
Associated had, according to written arguments from last month’s hearing, ‘exceeded its approved budget by over £18.6 million with its total costs amounting to an “eye-watering” £34,481,622.54’. The celebrities have legal insurance covering £16.2m.
Mr Justice Nicklin refused to impose a cap on the costs in the case, though he described Associated’s costs as ‘striking’. He also ordered that the claimants make a payment on account - of £9,544,355, by 28 August.
A spokesman for Associated Newspapers Ltd described the judgment as ‘another overwhelming victory for the Mail and its journalism’.
The publisher added: ‘[Mr Justice Nicklin’s] judgment is a devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors and executives. These outrageous claims should never have been brought. That they were pursued raises disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession.
'The Mail has worked continuously for the past four and a half years to defend the reputations of its hard-working and honest journalists against smears that date back three decades and would have destroyed their careers.’
4 Readers' comments