LONDON, July 8 -- Prince Harry's years-long legal campaign against Britain's tabloid press suffered a major setback yesterday after he lost his privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail, in what is expected to be his final court battle with the newspaper.

The Duke of Sussex was among seven claimants, including high-profile singer Sir Elton John, who accused Associated Newspapers of unlawfully obtaining private information for stories published in the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday between the 1990s and 2011.

Calling the decision "a complete and obvious whitewash", Harry criticised the ruling in a joint statement with fellow claimant Baroness Doreen Lawrence, whose son Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack in 1993...