Lawyers accused of ‘drip-feeding’ information in case against Mail publisher

Lawyers for several high-profile people, including the Duke of Sussex, and lawyers for the publisher of the Daily Mail have accused each other’s legal teams of “drip-feeding” disclosure ahead of their trial in the new year.

Harry and six others are bringing legal action against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).

The group, which also includes Sir Elton John, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Liz Hurley, allege that ANL carried out or commissioned unlawful activities such as hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars, “blagging” private records and accessing private phone conversations.

Actress Sadie Frost, campaigner Baroness Doreen Lawrence and politician Sir Simon Hughes are also in the group.

ANL denies the allegations and is defending the legal action, previously describing the claims as “simply preposterous”.

At a hearing on Monday, the High Court in London heard that each side is awaiting further information from the other, in order to fully prepare their case.

In written submissions, Antony White KC, for ANL, said: “Since the October case management conference, the claimants have continued to ‘drip-feed’ disclosure, including manifestly incomplete but nevertheless highly significant documentation from early 2016.”

He said that, among other things, this included several witness statements.

Mr White also told the court that there was “no basis” for the group’s lawyers to make an application asking Mr Justice Nicklin to order them to search 36 boxes of archive material.

He added that 11 boxes had been looked at “in order to decide whether they should be sent back to storage and this led to potentially relevant documents being identified”.

David Sherborne, representing the group, told the court that the 11 archive boxes that had been reviewed by ANL’s legal team resulted in the disclosure of 18 documents.

Asking the judge to rule that the other 36 boxes should be searched, Mr Sherborne said in written submissions: “The defendant refuses to search any of these boxes, essentially on the basis that the process of reviewing the boxes was time-consuming.”

He added: “The drip-feed of disclosure by the defendant from crown archive demonstrates a fundamental failure to carry out proper searches.

“The defendant has repeatedly said to the court that it has carried out thorough and ‘generous’ disclosure, but this is plainly not the case.”

On Monday, the court heard that lawyers for the group now only wanted 12 boxes to be searched, with Mr White arguing that not all these were relevant, but agreeing to search those that had matching codes to boxes that had previously contained relevant documents.

The judge agreed to this course of action, and further ruled that any redactions to the documents did not need to be lifted.

Earlier in the day Mr Justice Nicklin ruled that documents gathered by a research team investigating allegations of unlawful information gathering by ANL be “properly searched”.

At a preliminary hearing last month, Mr White said it was “highly likely” that a research team working with the group of seven had relevant documents about when some of those individuals knew they might have a claim.

He alleged that the team was using “camouflage” by publishing articles on the website Byline so that Sir Simon could claim he became aware of certain information as a result of the publication.

Mr Sherborne said the allegation was “simply untrue” and rejected a claim that lawyers for the group had been “cherry picking” documents.

But Mr Justice Nicklin ruled that the group of seven does have legal control over the research team’s documents.

In a judgment published on Monday, he said: “My conclusion is that the documents held by members of the research team, including documents that came into their possession prior to the engagement agreement, are within the control of the claimants for the purposes of standard disclosure, those documents must be properly searched and such documents that fall within the terms of standard disclosure must be disclosed.”

Mr Justice Nicklin made no findings on the allegations of unlawful information gathering.

He handed down judgment before the start of a two-day preliminary hearing for the trial, which is expected in January.