The publisher had insisted on oath at the 2011 Leveson Inquiry into press standards that there had been no wrongdoing at its newspapers.
An all-or-nothing defence, its opponents said, made Associated Newspapers vulnerable to the discovery of even the smallest amount of evidence of unlawful activities. As it turned out, there was not even that.
Other law firms were watching the case closely to inform their own approach to taking on Associated Newspapers.
The BBC has been told potential claimants included “the usual suspects” who had won cases against other newspapers, as well as one public figure linked to the royal family.
Whether those legal actions will continue in light of Tuesday’s ruling remains to be seen.
But it seems the 20-year history of this type of claim must surely be coming to an end.
The Associated Newspapers case was different from what went before in several ways.
The judge made it harder for the claimants to win by insisting they prove conclusively that every newspaper story was obtained unlawfully, rather than allowing “generic evidence” about the “propensity” of journalists to break the rules.
The evidence was also gathered in questionable ways, the judge found.
Some crucial documents and witnesses were obtained in return for money by Graham Johnson, a former phone-hacking journalist turned campaigner for press standards.
He paid private investigators for information, telling the BBC this week that this was so he could write online news stories about the scandal. The use of the information for evidence came later.
This was “unconvincing”, the judge found. He decided that Johnson knew his work was both for the purposes of journalism and winning a court case.
One of those paid, the private investigator Gavin Burrows, seemed to have entered two statements. One said he carried out widespread unlawful activities for the Mail newspapers, and another said that he had done nothing of the sort.
For the judge, the statements cancelled each other out, and he decided he could not rely on what Burrows said.