Harry, Elton John Ordered to Pay Mail $13M

Harry has blamed the press for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, killed in a 1997 Paris car crash while pursued by paparazzi, and for attacks on his wife Meghan that he says drove the couple to leave royal life and move to the United States in 2020, according to the Associated Press.

Harry won a judgment condemning the publishers of the Daily Mirror for what the court called "widespread and habitual" phone hacking.

Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid The Sun issued an unprecedented apology for intruding on Harry's life and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy claim, the AP reported.

After an 11-week trial in London, Nicklin dismissed all the claims, finding the claimants had failed to prove their allegations. He cited a shortage of evidence and said the reporting may have come from legitimate sources.

Nicklin makes what the BBC described as an exceptional order requiring the claimants to cover up to £34.5 million in Associated Newspapers' costs, on an indemnity basis — the more generous measure for the recovering side — citing the way the case was run, including unsupportable claims that senior executives had lied to the Leveson inquiry.

News becomes public that Harry and Meghan are moving back to Britain after more than six years in California, to a nonroyal residence outside London. The BBC reported their children, Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, are enrolled to start school in September.

Nicklin sets the interim payment at £9.54 million, due within a week.