The Duke of Sussex’s legal claim against the publisher of the Daily Mail could face a trial in 2026, a High Court judge has suggested.
Harry is among a group of high-profile individuals – including Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish, actresses Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley, and politician Sir Simon Hughes – bringing legal action against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).
They have accused the publisher of allegedly carrying out or commissioning unlawful activities, such as hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars, “blagging” private records, burglaries to order and accessing and recording private phone conversations.
ANL firmly denies the allegations and is defending the legal action, previously telling the court that they are “lurid” and “simply preposterous”.
At a preliminary hearing on Tuesday, which was attended by Lady Lawrence, judge Mr Justice Nicklin said that it was important to progress the case to an eventual trial.
He said: “My broad objective is we fix a trial date… It will probably start on 14 January 2026.”
The judge continued that the date may change and repeated that it was an “objective”.
He added: “I don’t know what is going to happen in various stages of the litigation… That objective may ultimately be thwarted.”
The two-day hearing in London is due to deal with requests for documents, costs and a bid to have part of the case dismissed without a trial.
The hearing before Mr Justice Nicklin and Judge David Cook is due to conclude on Wednesday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article