LONDON — Prince Harry’s attorneys requested on Friday that a judge decide that a tabloid newspaper had defamed the British royal by publishing an article about his need for police protection while he and his family were visiting the U.K.
Harry is suing the publisher of the Mail on Sunday, Associated Newspapers Ltd., in response to a report that said he attempted to cover up his separate legal action against the British government for forbidding him from paying for police security.
Harry’s main counsel requested Judge Matthew Nickin to either throw out the publisher’s defense or issue a summary judgment, a decision in the prince’s favor without a trial, at a hearing at the High Court in London.
According to attorney Justin Rushbrooke, the publisher’s “substantive pled defense” that the piece reflected an “honest opinion” was not supported by the facts.
The piece, according to him, was “fundamentally wrong.”
Harry did not attend the session in court. When the prince, also known as the Duke of Sussex, and his wife, Meghan, left their positions as senior working royals and moved to North America in 2020, they lost their publicly paid U.K. police security.
According to Harry’s attorneys, the prince is wary of returning to his own country with the couple’s kids, Prince Archie, who is almost 4 years old, and Princess Lilibet, who is almost 2 years old, because it is not secure.
The former actress Meghan Markle and Harry, the younger son of King Charles III, wed at Windsor Castle in 2018
When visiting Britain, the 38-year-old prince wants to personally cover the cost of police security, but the government has warned that is not feasible. A judge let Harry file a lawsuit against the government last year. The trial, in that case, is still pending.
In February 2022, a report in the Mail on Sunday with the headline “Exclusive: How Prince Harry sought to keep his legal struggle with the government over police bodyguards a secret” prompted Harry to file a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers. But, shortly after the news leaked, his PR team attempted to downplay the conflict.
When it was implied that the prince was misled in his early public declarations regarding the lawsuit against the government, Harry argues that the publication labeled him.
The case could proceed after Nicklin determined the piece was defamatory in July. The judge must still address questions, including whether the story was truthful or in the public interest.
The publisher’s counsel, Andrew Caldecott, said that Harry’s attorneys were “straitjacketing the newspaper’s right to speak” with their argument.
Speaking opinion to authority is just as important, if not more so, than telling the truth to power, according to him, as long as facts support the opinion.
The judge said he would decide later after the all-day session.
The former actress Meghan Markle and Harry, the younger son of King Charles III, wed at Windsor Castle in 2018 but left their positions as working royals in 2020, citing what they called the intolerable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media.
Harry’s memoir “Spare,” released in January, is rife with his rage toward the British press. In addition to charging the media with harassing Meghan, he blames an excessively aggressive press for losing his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997.
The pair has not shied away from retaliating against what they believe to be media maltreatment through the British legal system. Meghan won a privacy invasion lawsuit against Associated Newspapers in December 2021 because the Mail on Sunday published a letter she addressed to her divorced father.
Harry has filed a separate hacking lawsuit against the publisher of another tabloid, the Mirror, and is one of several celebrities suing Associated Newspapers over alleged phone hacking.
SOURCE – (AP)
