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Judges have imposed a cap on legal costs in a High Court dispute between the publisher of the Daily Mail and alleged victims of phone hacking, including Prince Harry, after finding that the amounts both sides were planning to spend were “manifestly excessive”.
Associated Newspapers and a group of seven claimants including Sir Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, as well as the Duke of Sussex, had budgeted for a combined total of almost £40mn to fight the case.
But in a ruling on Friday the High Court only permitted costs of about £4mn each. Mr Justice Nicklin and Senior Master Cook said that while either side could exceed the limit, they were unlikely to be able to recover expenses incurred above the cap if the other side were ordered to pay their costs.
Colin Campbell, a consultant at law firm Kain Knight and a former costs judge, said the ruling would likely work to the advantage of Associated, as the better-resourced party.
The case is the final leg of Prince Harry’s protracted legal battle against the UK’s tabloid press. The prince this week settled his claims against Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, after the company issued an apology for intruding into his private life and agreed to pay him “substantial” damages.
The claimants in the case against Associated, who also include actor Sadie Frost and former Liberal Democrat MP Sir Simon Hughes, allege the company published stories about them in the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday based on information gathered unlawfully. Alleged techniques include “blagging” sensitive records through deception, using private investigators and intercepting voicemail messages.
Associated has firmly denied the claims, previously describing them as “simply preposterous” and “lurid”.
The company had planned to spend £19.8mn fighting the case while the claimants had budgeted for £18.7mn, according to the costs ruling published on Friday.
The judges said they “had little difficulty concluding that such sums were manifestly excessive”.
They added that the claimants’ respective legal teams had “considerable expertise in this type of litigation and were not starting from scratch”, citing other legal proceedings such as the case against Murdoch’s company.
The claims were “really rather simple”, the judges added. The claimants “will either succeed or fail in demonstrating” that each of the articles they have complained about was the product of unlawful information gathering.
A trial has been scheduled for nine weeks, although it is not expected to begin until next January. Several pre-trial hearings have been scheduled for this year.
The judges said on Friday that they did not want to impose an “irreducible minimum” for costs but set “reasonable and proportionate parameters”.
They added they did not wish to “downplay the complexity of the factual issues that may arise” but wanted to put them “in the context of the sorts of litigation that come before the courts”.
