LONDON, March 31 (Reuters) - The trial at London's High Court to consider allegations from Britain's Prince Harry, singer Elton John and five other high-profile figures against the Daily Mail's publisher ended on Tuesday after 10 weeks of intense legal argument.
Judge Matthew Nicklin said he would take some time to consider the case, with an outcome not expected for several months.
Here are details of the case:
WHO IS SUING THE MAIL?
Prince Harry, King Charles' younger son and the Duke of Sussex, music
legend Elton John, John's husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence and former British lawmaker Simon Hughes are suing Associated Newspapers Limited alleging unlawful information gathering.
They launched the action at the High Court against Associated, the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, in October 2022. Associated has denied all the allegations, calling them "preposterous smears".
WHAT IS THE CASE ABOUT?
The seven claimants say that journalists working for the titles commissioned private investigators to commit a series of unlawful acts between 1993 and 2011.
These included hacking voicemail messages on their mobile phones, tapping their landline phones and obtaining confidential information, such as flight details and medical records, by deception – known as "blagging".
Among those named as being involved are some senior current and former journalists, including editors of national newspapers.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED DURING THE HARRY TRIAL?
All seven claimants gave often angry or tearful evidence detailing how the alleged behaviour had impacted their lives.
It was the second time Harry appeared in a witness box, having become the first royal to do so for more than 130 years during his successful phone-hacking lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mirror newspaper in June 2023.
The prince said the titles had made his wife Meghan's life "an absolute misery". Elton John said his landline phones were bugged while Hurley was staying with him and that his medical records were unlawfully accessed, while his husband accused the Mail titles of homophobia.
Lawrence, whose son was killed in a racist murder, said private investigators had been hired to gather information about her, and claimed the paper had been using her to gain credibility.
One of the most eye-catching allegations related to Frost. An unpublished story discovered on the Mail's system included extensive medical details of her ectopic pregnancy in 2003 about which she had not even told her mother or sisters.
More than a dozen current or former Associated staff gave evidence in which they rejected all the allegations. They said the information had come from legitimate sources, "leaky" friends or acquaintances of the celebrities, or from the claimants' own representatives.
Private investigators had only been used to quickly find telephone numbers or addresses, a practice which they said was commonplace in British newspapers at the time, and which Mail chiefs said they had later ended.
WHO IS GAVIN BURROWS AND WHY IS HE KEY?
One of the key factors in the outcome will be how the judge views the evidence of private investigator Gavin Burrows, who is central to many of the allegations.
The claimants' legal team say he provided a witness statement in August 2021 which stated he had targeted possibly thousands of people for Associated, from tapping landlines and hacking voicemails to obtaining information by deception.
But in his evidence at court, given from an unnamed foreign location because he said he had received threats, Burrows said that statement had been faked, his signature forged, and that his X account, which had featured comments supporting the claimants' case, had been hacked.
The claimants' lawyer, David Sherborne, suggested Burrows, who the court was told had been paid 75,000 pounds ($98,870) for a book deal and other media work, had performed the volte-face out of revenge because of a dispute over money.
THE END OF PRINCE HARRY'S MEDIA WAR
The Associated case is the culmination of legal battles Harry has waged against the British press in what he said was his mission to purge it of wrongdoers and bring senior figures to account for their behaviour.
For both sides, the implications are huge, both in terms of reputation and costs, with the legal bill from the case running into tens of millions of pounds.
Last year, Harry settled a lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper group (NGN) for a total of more than 10 million pounds ($13.2 million), winning an apology and an admission for the first time that private investigators working for the Sun newspaper had acted unlawfully, including targeting his late mother, Princess Diana.
He also won substantial damages and legal costs after he successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers in 2023.
($1 = 0.7551 pounds)
(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
