A newspaper article which accused Prince Harry of trying to “mislead and confuse” the public over his security arrangements was defamatory, a High Court judge has ruled.
The Duke of Sussex is suing the publisher of The Mail on Sunday - Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) – over a story about his court battle with the Home Office over his security detail while in the UK.
The piece was published in February under the headline: “Exclusive: How Prince Harry tried to keep his legal fight with the government over police bodyguards a secret… then – just minutes after the story broke – his PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute.”
After a preliminary hearing in the case, Mr Justice Nicklin has now delivered his verdict on the meaning of the article to the ordinary reader – the first stage in a libel battle.
He concluded the Mail on Sunday article had suggested Harry “initially sought confidentiality restrictions that were far-reaching and unjustifiably wide and were rightly challenged by the Home Office on the grounds of transparency and open justice”.
The judge said the article went on to suggest the Duke, in public statements about his offer to pay for his own security, “was responsible for attempting to mislead and confuse the public as to the true position, which was ironic given that he now held a public role in tackling ‘misinformation’.”
The judge found that the meaning of the news article was defamatory, as readers would be led to believe the Duke’s alleged actions in “seeking unjustifiably wide confidentiality restrictions on court proceedings” were “discreditable or worthy of criticism”.
He found that the allegation Harry had tried to “spin” the facts of the court case, and therefore to “mislead” the public, was also defamatory.
ANL’s lawyers had argued the article was not defamatory, with Andrew Caldecott QC telling the High Court: “The article does allege that the claimant’s PR team spun the story, or added a gloss unduly favourable to the claimant, which led to inaccurate reporting and confusion about the nature of the claim.
“It does not allege dishonesty against them.”
The libel battle will now move to the next stage, when the newspaper publisher must file a defence to the Duke’s legal claim.
