Prince Harry to pay huge £9.5m in authorized charges after main court docket defeat

The amount has to be paid by August 28 at 4pm, with experts stating that the amount will be paid from an insurance pot, with an even larger amount to come at a later date

The Duke of Sussex and six other household names will have to pay an initial £9.5 million to Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers for its legal fees over their failed unlawful information gathering claims, a High Court judge has ruled.

The high-profile figures, also including Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Sir Elton John, sued Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over allegations of unlawful information-gathering. The amount has to be paid by August 28 at 4pm, with experts stating that the amount will be paid from an insurance pot.

The judgement states: “The Court has not determined how much of Associated’s costs the Claimants must ultimately pay. The issue before the Court was the basis on which costs should be assessed, not the amount recoverable. If the amount is not agreed, that question will be determined separately by a Costs Judge.

“The indemnity costs order also has an important consequence for the costs budgets previously approved by the Court. If costs had been assessed on the standard basis, Associated’s approved budget would ordinarily have restricted the amount it could recover unless there were good reasons to depart from it.

“Because costs are to beassessed on the indemnity basis, that restriction no longer applies, and Associated may therefore seek to recover costs exceeding its approved budget. This does not mean that those additional costs will automatically be allowed: if the amount is not agreed, the Costs Judge must still determine whether the costs claimed were reasonably incurred and are reasonable in amount”

The High Court claims brought by the Duke of Sussex and others were also slammed as being “speculative and substantially inferential” and “lacked a proper evidential foundation” by judge Mr Justice Nicklin

ANL, which also publishes the Mail On Sunday, had asked for more than £9.9 million as an interim payment, while lawyers for the claimants, which also includes David Furnish, Sadie Frost, Liz Hurley and Sir Simon Hughes, said the interim payment should be just over £7.9 million.

During a hearing in July, ANL said the group should pay the total costs on the indemnity rather than a standard basis.

However, Nicholas Bacon KC, for the group, said in written submissions that it could be “very significant” if the group of seven had to pay ANL’s costs on this stricter basis and could lead to them being without enough insurance cover.

A spokesman for the publisher said the decision was “a devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors and executives”.