Prince Harry has been told that he and fellow claimants taking legal action against the Daily Mail publishers must not spend more than £4.1m on costs – around £14m less than they were proposing.
The Duke of Sussex is among a group of people – including Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish, actor Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley, and politician Sir Simon Hughes – who are bringing legal action against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over alleged misuse of private information.
ANL firmly denies the allegations and is defending the legal action.
The two sides had proposed to spend more than £38.8m in the legal claim combined, with the claimants proposing to spend around £18.7m.
But Judge Cook said he and Mr Justice Nicklin “had little difficulty concluding that such sums were manifestly excessive and therefore disproportionate”.
On Friday, the two High Court judges ruled that the claimants could instead spend around £4.1m, and ANL around £4.5m, in the case.
Judge Cook said: “Costs management is not an exercise of reducing the parties’ costs to an irreducible minimum but setting reasonable and proportionate parameters.”
The Duke of Sussex has accused the publisher of allegedly commissioning unlawful activities, including hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars, recording private phone conversations “blagging” private records, and even burglaries to order.
ANL, which firmly denies the allegations, previously told the court that the accusations are “lurid” and “simply preposterous.
During the hearing last November, Mr Justice Nicklin said his “objective” was to progress the claim to trial, which he said could start on January 14 2026. He stated that the “anticipated length of the trial will be 45 days”.
In a 10-page ruling, Judge Cook said the legal claims were “really rather simple” and wrote: “The claimants will either succeed or fail in demonstrating the proposition. If the relevant claimant fails, that will be the end of the claim in respect of that article.
“If the claimant succeeds, the question of remedy will arise and on this issue the law is clear.”
Judge Cook continued: “This is not to downplay the complexity of the factual issues that may arise in the litigation, but it puts these claims in the context of the sorts of litigation that come before the courts.
“The fact that these claimants are well-known, and the litigation high-profile, does not affect the issues that must be resolved.”
The ruling comes days after Prince Harry settled his legal action against the publishers of The Sun newspaper, receiving a rumoured eight-figure settlement and a “full and unequivocal apology” for intrusion into his private life.
The duke and Lord Tom Watson, the former deputy Labour leader, had taken legal action against the publisher over allegations of unlawful information gathering.
It has been described as a “monumental victory” for Prince Harry against the British press and came after he secured a separate victory against the publishers behind The Mirror in 2023.
