Prince Harry aims on Friday to win his defamation lawsuit against publisher Associated Newspapers without the case going to trial, his lawyer said, as the duke escalates his legal battles against the tabloid press.
Harry, King Charles’s youngest son, sued Associated Newspapers last year over an article published in an issue of the newspaper. Mail on Sundaywhich alleged that the monarch had tried to keep the details of his legal struggle with the British Government over the security arrangements secret.
The London Supreme Court ruled in July that the text of the Mail it was defamatory, paving the way for Harry to press charges against one of Britain’s biggest media publishers.
The article said that Harry, 38, had tried to keep the details of his legal fight to re-establish his police protectionwhich was withdrawn after he stepped away from royal duties in 2020, and which his aides had then tried to circumvent the decision.
His lawyers confirmed to Reuters that they would ask Judge Matthew Nicklin at a hearing on Friday to conduct a summary judgmentthat is, a decision in your favor without the need for a trial.
Two years ago, Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, 41, also won a summary judgment in her privacy inquiry case against the Mail on Sunday for the newspaper having published parts of a handwritten letter that the Duchess had sent to her father, Thomas Markle.
The couple have been embroiled in numerous lawsuits against tabloids since their marriage in 2018. accusing newspapers of racism and persecuting them by publishing lies.
The intrusion of the media was, in fact, one of the reasons cited by both to justify their decision to step away from royal duties and move to California.
In Harry’s memoir, In the shadowand in the Netflix documentary series about the couple, criticism against the press is constant, but peppered with the idea that others members of the royal family would have been accomplices with the tabloids.
So far, Buckingham Palace has not issued any comments on these remarks.
Harry, officially known as the Duke of Sussex, also said in a TV interview in January that he hoped his legal action would help reform the media, adding that his father had described it as “a suicide mission”.