Prince Harry called out the court’s “whitewashed” decision to dismiss his and six others’ years-long lawsuit against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).
“We came to court seeking justice and accountability. But we have received neither,” the Duke of Sussex and his fellow claimant Baroness Doreen Lawrence told Page Six in a statement Tuesday.
“This judgment represents a complete reversal of the position which previous judges have taken in relation to the hacking claims successfully brought against both News Group Newspapers and Mirror Group Newspapers (who were represented by, at the time, the judge who made this decision),” they added.
“Generic findings about various private investigators that were held by the courts in these parallel claims to have carried out unlawful activity at the very same time in relation to similar stories and well-known individuals have been wholly ignored.”
Harry, 41, and Lawrence, 73, said the court has shown “inconsistency which is hard to understand or reconcile with common sense” by choosing to dismiss the evidence heard over the course of the trial.
“It is a complete and obvious whitewash, but sadly not altogether unexpected,” the “Spare” author and the activist claimed in the statement.
“However, the lengths to which the court has gone to exonerate the Mail is as shocking as it is totally unwarranted,” they added.
“When the court says there is not sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, despite the documents showing otherwise, then one does wonder how justice was ever going to be achieved.”
Harry and Lawrence said they feel like the court has “one rule for the newspapers and another for the claimants.”
“While the claimants presented evidence, Mail journalists simply gave denials, and the court chose uncritically to believe them, even in the face of inconsistencies, contradictions and blatant untruths that were obvious to neutral observers in court when compared to the documents,” they alleged.
“We presented to the court evidence which we believed was compelling at the time and remains so now.”
Harry and Lawrence concluded their statement by thanking their legal team “for all their hard work” and the witnesses “who were brave enough to come forward in the pursuit of justice.”
On Tuesday morning, a UK High Court judge ruled against Harry’s favor in his case against ANL — the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday — whom the royal accused of unlawfully obtaining information.
Judge Matthew Nicklin said in his ruling that the claimants’ allegations were serious but they had not proven that the information used by ANL for its articles was not obtained unlawfully.
“The court rejected the argument that, simply because information was private, and because Associated could not positively explain how it had been sourced, the relevant article must have been unlawfully sourced,” he wrote in the summary, per CNN.
In 2022, Harry filed a lawsuit against ANL, claiming the company used listening devices placed in cars and homes and hired private detectives to illegally obtain information about them from the 1990s to 2011.
ANL previously denied the allegations and claimed their information was legitimately sourced.
In January, the 10-week trial began.
During Harry’s testimony, he shared that his wife, Meghan Markle, lived in “absolute misery” as a royal due to the media’s alleged constant invasion of privacy.
Harry arrived back in the UK on Monday to promote next year’s Invictus Games, which will be hosted in Birmingham.
The former helicopter pilot was supposed to bring the “Suits” alum, 44, and their children — Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5 — to England; however, Markle and the kids stayed in the US after being denied taxpayer-funded security.
Moments after learning of the judge’s ruling, Harry gave a welcome address at the 14th Invictus Games Foundation Conversation: From Policy to Practice conference at Chatham House.