Prince Harry stood before a British court again - and again came away empty. On 8 July the court dismissed the lawsuit he was pursuing together with six other well-known names, among them Elton John, Elizabeth Hurley and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, against the publisher of the "Daily Mail." They claimed the paper had for years obtained private information by dishonest means - through hired private detectives, deceptive access to confidential data, and even phone tapping.

After a trial that lasted 46 days, the judge ruled that the claimants had failed to prove that specific articles resulted directly from such unlawful methods. In other words - maybe something was going on behind the scenes, but the link to the published pieces wasn't proven to the degree the court requires. For Harry, who has already won several similar cases against other British media groups, this is a bitter turn.

His reaction was anything but conciliatory. In a joint statement with Baroness Lawrence, he called the ruling an "obvious cover-up" and complained that the court gave greater credibility to the journalists' denials than to the documented evidence. "It seems there's one rule for the newspapers and another for the claimants," was the point of his frustration.

And there's the Balkan angle of the story. A man born into one of the most powerful families in the world, with an army of lawyers behind him, claims the system is rigged against the ordinary claimant facing a powerful outlet. If this happens to him - with all the money and surname he has - what chance does an ordinary citizen have when they clash with someone who buys ink by the tonne? Court battles against media empires are rarely won by the one with less money, and that's not just Britain's problem.