Revealed: Prince Harry’s Mystery Libel Suit Accuses the ‘Mail’ of Defaming Him Over Secrecy Claim
Prince Harry has filed yet another lawsuit against the publishers of the Daily Mail, but his representatives are refusing to say what it is about.
A spokesperson for Prince Harry told The Daily Beast that Harry had indeed filed a complaint against the company, but declined to give further details about the exact nature of the action. Associated Newspapers declined to comment.
However, The Daily Beast was told by a source in the newspaper industry that it’s believed the suit is a libel claim and related to an article in the Mail on Sunday saying that Harry had tried to keep secret a lawsuit he has brought against the British government.
A second source confirmed this was indeed the cause of the complaint.
Harry initiated a lawsuit earlier this year to try and force the British state to reinstate him with police protection when visiting the U.K.
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On Feb. 20, the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline ran a story about the case with a long headline reading: “EXCLUSIVE: How Prince Harry tried to keep his legal fight with the government over police bodyguards a SECRET… then—just minutes after the story broke—his PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute.”
The article alleged that legal documents “show [Harry] sought a far-reaching confidentiality order on documents and witness statements surrounding his case against the Government. But the Home Office argued for transparency, saying ‘there must be a sufficiently good reason, in the wider public interest, to justify the departure from open justice that such an order involve.’”
British lawyer Mark Stephens of international firm Howard Kennedy told The Daily Beast that it was impossible to say why exactly the duke had issued the action without explaining it but said, “It would appear they are trying to build a narrative from their side first. But we have a thing called the ‘open justice principle’ in British courts which means that the public has a right to know what is going on in their courts in their name, so it may take some time but we will find out what this is about. Justice is not a private action.”
Prince Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, won a stunning victory over Associated Newspapers last year when a court ruled that by publishing a handwritten letter she had sent to her father, the Mail and Mail on Sunday had violated both Meghan’s privacy and copyright.
In January 2021, Harry settled a defamation case against Associated over stories they had published about his relationship with members of the armed forces.
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