LONDON - Prince Harry, singer Elton John and other high-profile figures are trying to appeal the dismissal of their privacy lawsuits against the Daily Mail, their lawyer said on Friday, as Harry seeks to revive his legal battle with the British press.
The younger son of King Charles, who recently returned to Britain from the U.S. with his American wife Meghan, was one of seven claimants who sued Associated Newspapers over alleged unlawful information gathering.
The claimants had alleged that journalists working for the titles commissioned private investigators to commit a series of unlawful acts between 1993 and 2011.
But their cases were comprehensively rejected in July by London’s High Court, which later ruled that the claimants could face an even higher legal bill because they conducted the lawsuits in an unreasonable way.
A lawyer for the claimants said in a statement on behalf of six of them, including Harry, Elton John and actor Elizabeth Hurley, that they had applied for permission to appeal the “dismissal of their claims and the indemnity costs order.”
“The claimants respectfully disagree with those unprecedented decisions, which they consider to be legally and factually flawed,” the lawyer’s statement added.
There was no comment from a spokesperson for Harry or Associated Newspapers.
Harry seeks to resume battle with press
Harry’s lawsuit against the Daily Mail was the culmination of a long campaign against the British media, during which he won against the publisher of the Daily Mirror tabloid and settled a claim with Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm.
The Royal has long blamed the press for the 1997 Paris car crash that killed his mother, Princess Diana, and compared her treatment to that of Meghan. Holding back tears in the witness box, he said the Mail made Meghan’s life “an absolute misery.”
Since returning to Britain in August, Harry has said he wanted to reconcile with his father and the rest of his family, also saying he hoped his fraught relationship with the British press would be better.
“My hope is that it will change,” he said in an interview with GQ magazine last month. “There have been some battles that have been fought, necessarily so. But hopefully we can all draw a line under that.”
Sam Tobin and Michael Holden, Reuters
