Prince Harry faces setback in latest legal battle with Mail on Sunday

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" that 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 serious harm to his reputation, saying: “Ultimately this is an issue of fact.”

The Duke, who is suing the publishers of the Mail on Sunday over a report that he “tried to keep his legal fight with the government over police bodyguards a secret”, claimed the story harmed his reputation so as to “constitute an attack on his honesty and integrity and undermine his fitness to be involved both in charitable and philanthropic work in general”.

In particular, he said, it damaged his efforts to combat online misinformation through the Archewell Foundation.

The newspaper report said that “just 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 Justice 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.

“This makes the issue unsuitable for determination as a preliminary issue.”

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.

“The allegations against the claimant are self-evidently exceptionally serious and damaging: they constitute an attack on his honesty and integrity and undermine his fitness to be involved both in charitable and philanthropic work in general, and in efforts to tackle online misinformation in particular (through the Archewell Foundation),” his lawyers said.

“They are plainly calculated to incite, as they did incite, public opprobrium.”

In particular, they cited comments on the MailOnline version of the story 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 a judicial review of the Government’s decisions about police protection for him and his family when they are 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 he was seeking a 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 a court hearing in February, lawyers acting for the Government appeared to challenge that statement, saying the offer of payment “was notably not advanced to Ravec [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 immediate 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”.

In papers filed to the High Court, the Duke’s lawyers claimed the court hearing “was no rebuttal at all to the Claimant’s public statement, let alone a ‘crushing’ one”.

A preliminary issues trial, set to last two-and-a-half hours, is listed to be heard in person in the Media and Communications court between June 7 and July 1.

Each party's costs have been capped at £30,000.