Sir Elton John felt safety of his children ‘violated’, court hears

Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish felt the safety of their children had been “violated” by alleged unlawful news gathering by the Daily Mail’s publisher, the High Court has heard.

On the first day of a nine-week trial on Monday, the court in London was told that the couple also felt “outrage” at the alleged “stealing” of their son Zachary’s birth certificate and medical details after he was born.

Sir Elton and a group of six others, including the Duke of Sussex, allege that Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) carried out or commissioned unlawful activities to gather information for stories.

This included hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars, “blagging” private records and accessing private phone conversations.

ANL has strongly denied wrongdoing, with lawyers for the publisher telling the court that the claims made by Sir Elton and Furnish are “unsupported by any evidence before the court and utterly baseless”.

The couple allege 10 articles about them between 2002 and 2015 were based on unlawful information gathering by ANL.

In written submissions by barrister David Sherborne, he said of Sir Elton and Furnish: “They feel that their home, and the safety of their children and loved ones, has been violated.

“Mr Furnish explains that they are ‘profoundly affected by the uncertainty of not knowing how many times we were targeted… We still don’t know what was really done to us’.

“They are horrified that Associated has used their friendships against them by stealing information through those friends, which Sir Elton describes as ‘the exploitation of love, connection, trust and bonds to find out information shared in confidence’.

“Both Sir Elton and Mr Furnish underline the outrage they feel in light of Associated’s invasion into medical details surrounding the birth of their son Zachary, and the stealing of their son’s birth certificate ‘before we even had a chance to see it ourselves’.”

One of the 10 articles that Sir Elton and Furnish claim featured unlawfully gathered information included one published in the Mail On Sunday in May 2007, written by Katie Nicholl, which was headlined “Princes and Palace clash on ‘all-night’ Diana Party”.

Mr Sherborne said in written submissions that the piece contained “exclusive information relating to tensions in the royal household” over plans to hold an event after a memorial concert for Diana, Princess of Wales, which Harry and the now-Prince of Wales hoped that Sir Elton would attend.

He said: “Sir Elton and Mr Furnish have given clear evidence that the relevant information would have been communicated through private, direct conversations between Sir Elton and the Duke of Sussex.

“The Duke of Sussex has also given evidence that the information is private, and that he believes that he and Sir Elton exchanged voicemails regarding the possibility of Sir Elton performing.”

Responding to the claims in written submissions, Antony White KC, for ANL, said: “The article was entirely based on legitimate sources, and there is no evidence to the contrary.

“Ms Nicholl’s evidence is that it is highly likely to have been principally sourced from information provided to her by Lady Elizabeth Anson, who was a first cousin and close confidante of Queen Elizabeth II (who) worked as a party planner.”

He continued: “The claimants’ case appears to be based on no more than inference from the content of the article and Ms Nicholl’s alleged propensity to use or commission unlawful information gathering.

“The allegation, if advanced, is accordingly without any evidential foundation.”

Sir Elton and Furnish followed Monday’s proceedings on a live video-link, while some of their co-claimants were in court.

Mr White also said: “Sir Elton and Mr Furnish, like other claimants, rely on an attempt by members of the research team and the claimants’ legal representatives to link payment records with articles, loosely proximate in time to the payment record, which they claim to believe contain ‘hallmarks’ of unlawful information gathering.

“However, this attempt to substantiate the serious allegations of unlawful information gathering is, as with the same attempts elsewhere in these proceedings, unsupported by any evidence before the court and utterly baseless.”

The other claimants in the group are Baroness Doreen Lawrence, politician Sir Simon Hughes, and actresses Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost.

They started their legal cases against ANL in 2022, with documents setting out the claims naming dozens of journalists, including some national newspaper editors.

In 2023, ANL failed to have the cases thrown out before a trial on the basis that they were “time-barred” or brought too late.

The trial before Mr Justice Nicklin is expected to last nine weeks with a judgment in writing at a later date.