Prince Harry withdraws defamation claim against Mail on Sunday publisher

Just a month after winning a landmark phone hacking lawsuit against a British publisher, Prince Harry on Friday withdrew an unrelated libel suit against the publisher of another tabloid newspaper, The Mail on Sunday.

The Daily Mail, a sister paper to The Mail on Sunday, reported that lawyers for Harry, the Duke of Sussex, had dropped his claim that he had been murdered. denigrated in an article about his security arrangements after he and his wife Meghan split from the British royal family and moved to the United States in 2020.

The newspaper said the decision to drop the case will leave Harry liable for 250,000 pounds, or $316,000, in legal fees incurred by Associated Newspapers, which publishes The Mail on Sunday and The Daily Mail.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Harry said that following an unfavorable ruling last month over his proposal to throw out part of the defense's case, the Duke had decided to focus on the safety of his family, “ rather than these legal proceedings that continued to provide a platform for the Mail's false claims all those years ago.”

The spokesperson said legal costs in the case had yet to be calculated and it was “premature to speculate” on Harry's liability.

Although a setback, Friday's decision to withdraw the lawsuit mainly serves to dramatize just how many lawsuits the youngest son of King Charles III is involved in. legal challenge against the British Home Office for cutting his government-funded police protection after he and Meghan ceased to be “working royals.”

He is also still suing Associated Newspapers, as well as News Group Newspapers, the publisher of The Sun, for hacking his cell phone and otherwise violating his privacy. These are similar charges to those on which Harry won against The Mirror last month, when a judge ruled that Harry and others were victims of “widespread and habitual” hacking.

This case against The Mail revolved around a narrower issue: Did the newspaper defame him by claiming he misled the public in the dispute over whether he and his family would continue to receive government-funded police protection?

Lawyers for Harry argued that the article, published on February 19, 2022, wrongly claimed that the duke only offered to pay security out of his own pocket after filing a complaint against the Home Office for reducing his protection. He first made that offer, they said, during a meeting with senior relatives at Sandringham, Queen Elizabeth II's country residence, in January 2020.

Harry's lawyers also argued that the Mail article described the duke as having mobilized a “PR machine”, which they said “improperly and cynically sought to manipulate and confuse public opinion” over the security dispute.

But in a ruling on December 8, Judge Matthew Nicklin said lawyers for The Mail had a real chance of proving the article reflected “honest opinion” rather than being defamatory. The judge wrote: “The defendant may well argue that this was a masterclass in the art of 'spinning'.”

Of the many lingering consequences of Harry's bitter break with the royal family, his security record was one of the most persistent and generated the most lawsuits. Last May, a court rejected his petition to pay privately for protection from the Metropolitan Police when he and his family visit Britain. Lawyers for the Ministry of the Interior argued that it was in fact inappropriate for police officers to be hired as private security guards.

Harry is still awaiting a ruling on whether the Home Office – through the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known by the acronym Ravec – was entitled to reduce his police protection after he ceased to be a working royal was family.