By Julia Amann and Gareth Vipers
LONDON — Prince Harry lost his lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail over allegations of unlawful behavior and press intrusion, the latest twist in his yearslong battle with the British tabloids.
Judge Matthew Nicklin dismissed claims that reporters and investigators working for the Daily Mail had engaged in phone hacking and unlawful information gathering, in a ruling by the High Court Tuesday.
"Suspicion, even where understandable, was not enough," Nicklin said. Just because the publisher couldn't explain how information about the prince had been gathered didn't mean it had been illegally sourced, he said.
Prince Harry was one of seven high-profile claimants who brought the case, including Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost.
The prince's legal team didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Associated Newspapers Ltd., the Mail's publisher, declined to comment on the ruling. The publisher has previously denied any wrongdoing.
The prince has spoken extensively about the impact that tabloid newspapers, paparazzi and private investigators have had on his life. In his 2023 memoir, "Spare," he recalled telling his then-girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, to think of press intrusion as "a chronic illness" and wrote that he feared media attention could "cost me another person I cared about." His concerns were shaped by the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi.
In recent years, the prince has brought a series of legal claims against British newspaper publishers. Last year, he reached a last-minute settlement with Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers, which apologized to the prince and agreed to pay "substantial damages" for what it described as "serious intrusion" by two of its flagship titles, the Sun and the now-defunct News of the World.
News Group Newspapers is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal.
In 2023, the prince won a landmark case against Mirror Group Newspapers, with the High Court awarding him nearly $180,000 in damages after ruling that journalists at the publisher's titles had unlawfully hacked his mobile phone to obtain stories.
Prince Harry traveled from his California home to the U.K. this week to host the Invictus Games, a sporting event for wounded and injured military veterans, a trip that has revived a dispute with Buckingham Palace over the prince's security that has dominated the headlines in the British press.
Write to Julia Amann at julia.amann@wsj.com and Gareth Vipers at gareth.vipers@wsj.com