LONDON – A UK judge ruled on Friday that portions of an article in a tabloid about Prince Harry’s fight with the government to protect the police were defamatory, in the early stages. of Harry’s defamation case against the newspaper.
The Mail on Sunday reported in February that Harry was “trying to keep the details of his legal battle under wraps to restore his police protection secrecy from the public” and that, After the story broke, his public relations team “tried to put a positive spin on it. “
Harry has filed a lawsuit against the government, after the Home Office refused to allow him to pay for police protection while he and his family were in the UK. He and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, lost their publicly funded security when they retire from their royal duties in 2020and now they pay for their own safety as private citizens living in Los Angeles.
After the article was published, Harry filed a lawsuit against the newspaper’s parent company, Associated Newspaper Limited, saying the article meant he had “unjustly attempted to manipulate and confuse public opinion.” and confuse public opinion by allowing his ‘rotary doctor’ to make falsehoods and misleading statements about his willingness to pay for police protection,” according to Judgment of Justice Matthew Nicklin of the High Court of London was released on Friday.
Companies have deny that the article is libelousReuters reported.
Harry also claimed that the article made him appear to have lied about his initial public statements that he was willing to pay for police protection, according to the ruling.
In one previous preliminary hearingThe court considered the “natural and normal sense” of the article, which was published online and in print on February 19 and 20. It also considered issues of fact, opinion and whether it was valid. libel or not.
In Friday’s ruling, Justice Nicklin concluded: “It is possible to ‘twist’ the facts in a way that is not misleading, but the allegation made in the article is very much that this object is intended to mislead the public. “
“That provides the necessary element to make the connotations defamatory under common law,” the judgment said. But Justice Nicklin denied Harry’s claim that the article accused him of lying.
The next step, the judge wrote, would be for the company to come up with its own defense. “This is very much the first stage in a defamation claim,” wrote Justice Nicklin, adding, “It will be a matter of determining later in the proceedings whether the claim succeeds or fails, and if so, on what basis.”
The verdict is the latest chapter in Harry’s long, malicious relationship with British tabloids, which he has criticized for harassing his mother, Princess Diana, who died in an accident 1997 car in Paris when she was chased by photographers.
In 2020, when Harry and Meghan moved to Los Angeles, the couple informed the publishers of the top four tabloidsincluding The Daily Mail, that they will no longer engage with newspapers.
Last year, a Supreme Court judge ruled that The Mail on Sunday invaded Meghan’s privacy by publishing a private letter she sent her estranged father in 2018. An appeals court later rejected a bid by the newspaper’s publisher to force a hearing on her lawsuit.
