Setback for Harry in ‘serious harm’ lawsuit
Duke of Sussex’s claim that Mail on Sunday report undermined him cannot be heard early, rules judge
THE Duke of Sussex has suffered a setback in his latest legal battle to claim a newspaper report about his security caused him “serious harm” which undermined his charity work.
A High Court judge has rejected the Duke’s request for a preliminary trial to decide whether the Mail on Sunday story caused damage to his reputation. The Duke, who is suing the publishers over a report that he “tried to keep his legal fight with the Government over police bodyguards a secret”, claimed the story affected his reputation and did “constitute an attack on his honesty and integrity and undermine his fitness to be involved in charitable and philanthropic work in general”.
In particular, he said, it damaged his efforts to combat online misinformation through the Archewell Foundation.
The report said that “minutes after the story broke” the Duke’s “PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute”. The Duke is claiming “damages including aggravated damages” for libel. In a new ruling, Mr Jus- tice Nicklin has rejected the Duke’s legal team’s request that the issue of “serious harm” be tried as a preliminary issue, saying the Mail on Sunday must first be given the chance to make its case factually.
“I have refused to direct trial of the issue of serious harm,” he said. “I appreciate that the claimant’s [Harry’s] case is one based (at this stage) solely upon inference, but ultimately this is an issue of fact.
“The defendant [Associated Newspapers] must have an opportunity to advance any factual case in answer to the claimant’s inferential case.”
It could, he added, be fairly tried at a later stage of the case, meaning the Duke’s arguments will be heard during a full trial at a future date.
In his earlier documents submitted to the court, the Duke had claimed the Mail on Sunday story, and its online version, have caused and/or are likely to cause serious harm” to his reputation.
“They are plainly calculated to incite, as they did incite, public opprobrium,” his lawyers said. They cited comments on the Mailonline version as having “negative and damaging” reactions.
The Mail on Sunday story refers to a separate legal case brought by the Duke against the Home Office. He is seeking judicial review of the Government’s decisions about police protection for him and his family when in the UK.
The newspaper first revealed he was taking legal action in January.
The Duke’s team later sent out a statement confirming that the Duke was seeking judicial review, believing the UK to be unsafe for his family to return to, and claiming: “The Duke first offered to pay personally for UK police protection for himself and his family in January of 2020 at Sandringham.”
In February, government lawyers appeared to challenge that statement, saying the offer of payment “was notably not advanced to the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures” when the Duke visited the UK in June 2021 or in any of the correspondence which followed.
The following weekend, the Mail on Sunday published a second story stating that “the revelations are a crushing rebuttal to Harry’s initial public statement that implied he had always been willing to foot the bill”. A preliminary issues trial is listed to be heard in person between June 7 and July 1.