Prince Harry and his six co-claimants have lost every part of their case against the publisher of the Daily Mail. Mr Justice Nicklin's ruling, handed down on July 7, says so plainly: "each of the Claimants' claims is dismissed." The market has followed this case for months as a test of how ATE insurers respond once a claimant's conduct turns against them. Reading the judgment itself, rather than the coverage of it, throws up a few things worth flagging.
Nothing about costs, or about the ATE cover behind the claimants, has actually been resolved. Nicklin has fixed a hearing for July 29-30 specifically "to give the parties time to consider the judgment and to seek to agree the orders consequent upon" it, with any disputes settled then. Associated Newspapers has said publicly that its total spend runs past £50 million. The court's own cost-management history tells a different story about that figure, though. At the first case management hearing, in November 2024, the parties' combined proposed budgets of £38.8 million were rejected as "manifestly excessive and disproportionate." The court instead approved forward-looking budgets of £4.084 million for the claimants and £4.445 million for Associated, covering the case from late 2024 through to trial. That roughly £8.5 million sits a long way short of £50 million, because the litigation began in October 2022 and most of that spend predates the budgeting exercise entirely. Anyone trying to work out what a costs order will actually require the losing claimants to pay needs to keep that gap in mind.
The most useful new detail for this market isn't the dismissal itself, which was already reported. It's a specific finding buried in the limitation section of the judgment. Nicklin found that Dr Evan Harris, a Hacked Off figure closely involved in developing Sir Simon Hughes' case, made an "improper and dishonest" proposal in a July 2019 email. The plan was to get articles published on the Byline Investigates website so that those later publications could then be pointed to as the moment Sir Simon first learned he had a claim, obscuring the fact that the relevant material had, in the court's assessment, been available years earlier. Nicklin found that course was "adopted and implemented" once Sir Simon relied on the 2020 Byline publication date in his own pleaded case.
That finding is narrow. It attaches to Dr Harris and to Sir Simon Hughes' claim over the Miskiw/Anderson emails specifically. Nicklin did not find that Sir Simon Hughes shared Dr Harris's understanding or acted dishonestly himself. And a parallel allegation against Sadie Frost Law's advisers was considered and rejected: there was no equivalent "Frost Law Limitation Camouflage Scheme." The two claimants' positions are not interchangeable, and anyone citing this should keep them separate.
Limitation only became a live issue in this case because Nicklin dismissed every claim on the merits, which made the limitation defence unnecessary to decide for most of it. He went on anyway, as an alternative finding, to hold that Associated's limitation defence would have succeeded against Sir Simon Hughes and Sadie Frost Law's claims over the Miskiw/Anderson emails. Both, in his view, had or could have obtained enough knowledge to bring a claim by April 2016, six years before the claims were actually issued.
ATE underwriters typically price litigation risk at the outset on limited material, sometimes no more than counsel's opinion and pre-action correspondence, long before any trial judge has ruled on conduct or credibility. Most policies contain conduct-based walkaway clauses, meaning a finding that a claimant's strategy involved improper conduct can put cover at risk independently of whatever costs order the court eventually makes. Where several claimants run a shared central argument, as this group did, a finding against one claimant's conduct can complicate an insurer's position across the whole group, even when, as here, the finding doesn't extend to the others.
Rocco Pirozzolo, managing director and underwriting director at Harbour Underwriting in London, is clear on the baseline position. "A judgment against an insured does not of itself affect ATE cover," he said. "The product exists precisely to respond when a case is lost. Findings in a judgment would generally only put cover at risk if they involved dishonesty or improper conduct by the insured claimants themselves."
Group litigation adds a structural version of the same risk. Where several claimants run a shared central argument, as this group did, a finding against one claimant's conduct can complicate an insurer's position across the whole group, even when, as here, the finding doesn't extend to the others.
Colin Campbell, the former costs judge who has followed this case closely, told the Times before judgment that an indemnity costs order would let Associated recover a "substantially greater proportion" of its bill, since it would only need to show its costs were reasonably incurred rather than proportionate. Nicklin's judgment doesn't yet confirm whether costs will be awarded on that basis. That's what the hearing later this month exists to decide. But the limitation findings now on the record give Associated something specific to point to if it argues that conduct in this case went beyond the ordinary run of a lost claim.
Pirozzolo added that cover can, in principle, also be affected by matters outside a judgment, such as non-disclosure at inception or breach of policy conditions, but said he is not aware of any suggestion of that here. "I have not read the judgment," he said, "but so far as I am aware, it contains no findings of dishonesty or improper conduct against any of the claimants. Indeed, my understanding is that in assessing Prince Harry's evidence, Mr Justice Nicklin noted that Associated Newspapers did not allege any dishonesty on his part."
What is ATE insurance, and who provides it?
After the event (ATE) insurance is a policy taken out once a legal dispute has already arisen — typically alongside a no-win, no-fee (conditional fee) agreement with a solicitor. It protects a claimant against having to pay the other side's legal costs, and often their own disbursements, if the case is lost.
It exists because losing a case in England and Wales normally means paying not just your own costs but the winning side's too. Without cover, that risk can be enough on its own to stop someone bringing an otherwise reasonable claim, particularly against a well-resourced defendant. ATE removes that barrier by transferring the downside risk to an insurer in exchange for a premium.
What it typically covers:
What it doesn't cover: the claimant's own solicitor's base costs are not usually included unless specifically extended, and pre-policy costs (incurred before the ATE was taken out) are typically excluded.
How premiums work:
Underwriting: insurers typically want to see a materially better than even chance of success before taking on the risk — often cited at around 60%+ prospects, well above the 51% "balance of probabilities" a claimant needs to win in court — because unlike the claimant, the insurer has no upside if the case succeeds beyond the premium, only downside if it fails.
Why it can be withdrawn: most ATE policies contain conduct-related exclusions. If a claimant's own conduct during litigation is found by a judge to fall outside accepted norms — leading, for example, to a punitive costs order — insurers may argue the policy no longer responds, since the risk they priced at the outset assumed ordinary conduct, not conduct a court later finds improper.
Insurers/underwriters (write the ATE risk directly):
Brokers and MGAs (arrange and place ATE cover, sometimes on delegated authority):
Worth distinguishing from ATE insurers — litigation funders, who provide capital to run a case in exchange for a share of proceeds rather than insurance against losing. Names like Burford Capital and Manolete Partners are sometimes grouped alongside ATE providers in market reports, but they are a different product: funding a claim, not insuring against losing it. The two are frequently used together — a funder covering the cost of running the case, an ATE insurer covering the risk of an adverse costs order if it fails — but they carry different obligations and are regulated differently.
