won a judgment in 2023<\/a> that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for \u201cwidespread and habitual\u201d phone hacking. Last year, Rupert Murdoch\u2019s flagship UK tabloid, The Sun, made an unprecedented apology for intruding on his life for years and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.<\/p>\nMark Stephens, a media lawyer not involved in the case, said Harry’s first significant loss was due to a lack of evidence such as admissions of culpability that he had in previous lawsuits. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis was always a mosaic case where little inferences from different things were being put together by the lawyers for Prince Harry,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cAssociated Newspapers’ lawyers cleverly rearranged the tiles to show an innocent picture as opposed to the culpable picture that the claimants’ lawyers were trying to demonstrate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The verdict, released remotely with no court hearing, coincided with Harry\u2019s visit home to the United Kingdom, which has been dominated by headlines over his latest efforts to repair a rift with his father, King Charles III.<\/p>\n
Harry has said his litigation \u2014 in which he broke with royal family tradition to seek relief in the courts \u2014 was a primary source of his falling out with his father and brother, Prince William.<\/p>\n
His grudge with the tabloids runs deep and his legal actions are part of his larger quest to reform the news media that he says damaged his relationships and made him \u201c paranoid beyond belief.\u201d <\/p>\n
He blames the press for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi in Paris, and for attacks on his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, that led the couple to abandon royal life and move to the United States in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey continue to come after me, they have made my wife\u2019s life an absolute misery,\u201d he testified as he choked back tears in the witness box during the trial in January.<\/p>\n
![\"Prince](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/prince-harry-duke-of-sussex-and-meghan-duchess-of-sussex-pos-V72ABPYIAVF4TIE5BUF2H2MYFA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex pose for a photo during a Scar Tree Walk on April 16, 2026 in Melbourne. (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n
Newspaper editor says Harry is a hypocrite<\/p>\n
Associated Newspapers’ Editor-in-Chief Paul Dacre called Harry \u201ca confused and angry young man\u201d and said he felt sorry he had been drawn into the case. He mocked Harry\u2019s tell-all memoir, \u201cSpare\u201d which included details of drug use, losing his virginity, and dishing dirt on his kin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere isn\u2019t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family,\u201d Dacre said. \u201cFor him to complain about his privacy being invaded takes not just the biscuit but the whole tin. Poor Harry.\u201d <\/p>\n
Attorney David Sherborne said at trial that the Daily Mail and its sister publication, Mail on Sunday, used their journalists, freelance reporters and private eyes for \u201cclear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering\u201d to snoop on his clients.<\/p>\n
Defense lawyer Antony White said Harry was inclined to see unlawful evidence gathering everywhere but the more likely source of stories about him came from \u201cordinary, legitimate journalism.\u201d <\/p>\n
Other claimants in the case were actor Sadie Frost, former politician Simon Hughes and John\u2019s husband, David Furnish.<\/p>\n
The Mail trial played out differently from the Mirror case, with journalists parading to court to defend their work. Some Mail reporters pointed to official mouthpieces, such as a palace spokesperson, and others named their sources to dispute Harry\u2019s assertion that his \u201csocial circles were not leaky.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were not all tight-lipped,\u201d Katie Nicholl, a former Mail on Sunday editor, said about Harry\u2019s associates. \u201cI had very good sources in the inner circle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prince Harry’s final lawsuit aimed at taming the British tabloids ended in defeat today as a judge said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,6747,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-514784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-royalty","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}