Prince Harry, who's already a plaintiff in a lawsuit against British tabloids over phone hacking, filed a libel claim Wednesday against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline.
It's the same newspaper group that Harry's wife, Duchess Meghan of Sussex, defeated last year in another lawsuit over invasion of privacy and copyright infringement, winning undisclosed damages. The Mail on Sunday quietly published a court-ordered mea culpa online late Christmas Day 2021 with the generic headline “The Duchess of Sussex” and acknowledged her legal victory.
Harry also is one of many celebrity plaintiffs in a 2019 lawsuit filed against The Mirror and The Sun accusing journalists of hacking his phone voicemail years ago, when Harry was just out of his teens. That lawsuit is still pending.
Details about this latest lawsuit were sketchy. Harry's press office in California, where he and Meghan and their two children, Archie, 2, and Lilibet, 8 months, now live, would only confirm the lawsuit was filed but nothing about why.
Associated Newspapers also was short on details, only confirming the lawsuit. But according to a source familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly, Harry is suing over a Feb. 20 article in The Mail on Sunday alleging he sought to shield his legal battle from the public to gain police protection while visiting his homeland.
Harry is embroiled in a dispute with the British government over whether he and his family will be protected by British security when they are in the United Kingdom.
What's at issue with Harry bringing his family to the U.K.?
Government officials say he's not entitled to taxpayer-funded protection because he's no longer a working royal. Harry argues that the threat level against himself and his family remains high and he is unwilling to bring his children to his homeland because it is not safe.
Among the upcoming return dates potentially on Harry's diary are March 29 for the memorial service for his grandfather, Prince Philip, at Westminster Abbey, and the early June celebrations for grandmother Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee marking her 70 years on the throne.
On Sunday, the Mail on Sunday, citing court documents, reported that Harry tried to keep details of his legal battle to reinstate his police protection secret from the public by seeking a broad confidentiality order on documents and witness statements about his case against the government.
Britain'sHome Office, the sprawling government department with oversight on immigration, drugs policy, crime, fire, counter-terrorism, police and security matters, is arguing for transparency on the theory that Harry needs a good reason in the public interest to justify such secrecy.
Another hearing on the security matter is set for Friday.
Typically, matters of royal security are super secret: The palaces never talk about such things, not even off the record in broad strokes, on the theory the less said the better.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children are still royal, but Harry and Meghan have stepped back from their senior royal roles and are now living in Santa Barbara County, California. Thus, it was decided when they left the U.K. in 2020 that British taxpayers would not fund royal protection services in the U.S.; they are paying for their own private security.
But such private security would not have access to full government intelligence in the U.K. So what happens and who pays is up in the air for the Sussexes if they return to the U.K. for a visit.
Issues of Sussex payment for protective services in question
The Mail on Sunday's story suggested Harry's "spin doctors" misled journalists about Harry offering to pay for specialized protection in the U.K. while he is visiting, and that the government denied him anyway.
"It led to inaccurate reports across the media, such as the BBC headline: 'Prince Harry in legal fight to pay for UK police protection,' " the paper said. "As documents lodged at the High Court last week show, no such offer to pay was made in the Prince's initial 'pre-action' letters to the Home Office, suggesting he expected British taxpayers to cover it.
"The revelations are a crushing rebuttal to Harry's initial public statement that implied he had always been willing to foot the bill."
Harry and Meghan have won before
It is not the first time Harry has challenged The Mail's reporting. In February 2021, he chalked a libel lawsuit win against The Mail on Sunday, which apologized, issued a correction and paid damages over a story that wrongly reported Harry had "turned his back" on his prized military associations. Harry sued after the tabloid published stories in October 2020 claiming the prince had snubbed the Royal Marines after stepping down as a senior royal in 2020.
As per usual, the paper's correction was short and buried on the website and in the paper, in contrast to the original story, which has since disappeared from the paper's website. The outlet did not explain how they got their story wrong.
"We apologise to Prince Harry and have made a donation to (Harry's) Invictus Games Foundation," the correction concluded.
The jeers from the British media over Harry and Meghan's multiple media-targeted lawsuits have been deafening at times, but the couple keep winning against U.K. media and American paparazzi agencies.
In December 2020, Splash News and Picture Agency agreed not to take pictures of the Sussexes as part of a settlement with the former Meghan Markle arising from a legal complaint she filed in March over photos of her and Archie taken in a Canadian park on Vancouver Island.
In October 2020, the Sussexes sued and forced another paparazzi agency to confess and apologize for taking surreptitious photos, allegedly by drones, of their son Archie in their Los Angeles rental backyard. The agency, X17, one of the major celebrity photo agencies, promised to destroy the pictures and to never do it again, and paid some of the couple's legal fees to boot.
“We apologize to The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their son for the distress we have caused. We were wrong to offer these photographs and commit to not doing so again,” according to a statement issued by X17 and obtained by USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Prince Harry launches new libel lawsuit against British tabloid
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