Prince Harry and six others, including musician Elton John and actress Elizabeth Hurley, have been ordered to pay an initial payment of 9.5 million pounds, or Rs 124 crore, to the Daily Mail’s publisher after they lost the invasion of privacy case.
In a judgement on Friday, Justice Matthew Nicklin said in a statement that the payment must be made in a week, as the public figures could not prove the allegations. The seven claimants had alleged malpractice, such as illegal hacking of phones by Associated Newspapers. However, lawyers of the claimants said that the interim payment should only be 7.9 million pounds or a little over Rs 102 crore. Other high-profile figures involved in the case were Doreen Lawrence, the anti-racism activist whose son Stephen was stabbed to death in 1993 as he waited for a bus, Elton John’s film producer husband David Furnish, actor Sadie Frost and politician Simon Hughes.
However, the publisher denied the claims, and the judge said that there had been a shortage of evidence to support the claims and that the reporting could have come from legitimate sources.
Previous Privacy Cases Of Prince Harry
Harry has said his litigation, in which he broke with royal family tradition to seek relief in the courts, was a primary source of his falling out with his father, King Charles III, and brother Prince William.
