The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have good lawyers. They trust their lawyers. Meghan gave a lot of credit to her London lawyer Jenny Afia in her lawsuit against the Mail. The royal family continues to be salty as hell over the fact that Meghan and Harry both eschewed the Windsors’ go-to lawyers and went out and found competent professionals who don’t mind butting heads within the Establishment. I’m sure Meghan and Harry have a lot of good lawyers in California too, but at the moment, Harry is relying heavily on his UK lawyers. He has the Judicial Review to pay for his own police security. He has his on-going class-action legal action against several British media outlets who hacked his phone years ago. And now this: Harry has filed a lawsuit against the Mail.
The Duke of Sussex has launched a High Court libel action against the publisher of the Daily Mail. Court filings show Harry filed a claim against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) on Wednesday afternoon.
It is not known which of the publishers’ titles, which also includes The Mail On Sunday and MailOnline, the claim relates to, and there is no indication which article is complained of.
The duke is currently bringing privacy claims against News Group Newspapers, which publishes The Sun, and Mirror Group Newspapers, now Reach, which publishes The Mirror, over alleged phone hacking and unlawful information gathering. Harry, 37, is also involved in litigation against the Home Office over his security arrangements when he is in the UK.
A spokesperson for the duke said: “I can confirm the duke has filed a complaint against Associated Newspapers Limited.”
[From The Telegraph]
People Magazine didn’t have anything else to add, but Omid Scobie noted that we’ll likely hear more in coming weeks as the lawsuit becomes public domain (I would assume that would mean the American equivalent of public record). Scobie also points out that this could be connected to several “exclusive” stories the Mail has run about Harry’s Judicial Review and his fight to have police security (and pay for it himself). Harry also settled a defamation suit with ANI/The Mail about 13 months ago after the Mail completely misrepresented his work with the British military.
Note: I wrote all of the above last night before we knew which Mail story Harry was suing over. I actually looked through the Mail’s stories under the “Prince Harry” banner and I thought the most likely article was this Mail exclusive (published over the weekend) which I linked to a few days ago but didn’t excerpt anything from it. The Mail had a heinous spin on Harry’s security fight in the High Court, and they also blamed him for issuing a statement about it after the palace leaked it right after Prince Andrew lost his bid to dismiss Virginia Giuffre’s case. As it turns out, those stories about Harry’s security fight are exactly the ones he is suing over.
— Omid Scobie (@scobie) February 24, 2022
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