Prince Harry arrived in the UK less than 24 hours ago and he’s already done more public appearances this week than the Prince and Princess of Wales combined. LMAO, I swear to god. Here are some photos of Harry today, making his second public appearance in 20 hours or so. His first was last night at the premiere of Misan Harriman’s Shoot the People. Misan is close to Harry and Meghan, and clearly, Misan does not care one iota about pissing off the left-behinds.
Today’s event was the 14th Invictus Games Foundation Conversation: From Policy to Practice at Chatham House. Harry is taking part in a broader conversation about veterans, and the Minister for Veterans (Clive Bailey) was part of it. I always wonder what British government officials really think about the royal family’s vindictive behavior towards Harry.
Speaking of vindictiveness, Harry and his co-plaintiffs have lost their years-long lawsuit against ANL/The Mail. The court found that the claimants “failed to prove their pleaded allegations” and that the Mail could have gotten all of their reporting through legal means. As in, the Mail argued that every story they published contained information acquired through legal means, not bribery or blagging or phone-hacking or payoffs. And the court said “sounds good.”
Prince Harry has lost his long-running lawsuit against the publishers of the Daily Mail.
The British royal, who now lives in Montecito, California, was among a group of high-profile figures who filed suit in 2022 alleging they were victims of unlawful information gathering.
The others were Elton John, David Furnish, actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence and former politician Sir Simon Hughes. The court said all the claimants had failed to prove their claims.
The group alleged that as well as hacking their phones, journalists from the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday tapped landlines and bugged houses and cars. Publisher Associated Newspapers had strenuously denied the claims.
An 11-week trial took place earlier this year, with costs estimated to be in the region of $40 million.
Coincidentally, Harry is in the U.K. this week for the one-year countdown to the next Invictus Games, the sports tournament he created for injured veterans, which is set to take place in Birmingham in July 2027.
Yeah, this is depressing. This is the first press lawsuit Harry has lost – he won or accepted settlements on all of his previous lawsuits. I honestly didn’t think he and the other plaintiffs would lose.
Update: The Mail/ANL issued a statement, calling the verdict/judgment an “overwhelming victory for the Daily Mail and its journalists, and for a free press generally.” The huffy statement also claimed that the Mail’s “decent and hard-working journalists” had to watch as their integrity was “terribly impugned.” The lawyers also say that the case “wasted so much valuable court time and more than £50 million in legal costs. We will look to resolve outstanding issues, including the recovery of the costs we have incurred while defending ourselves against this egregious litigation.”
Photos courtesy of Getty Images, Backgrid.
