Prince Harry withdraws libel case against the Mail on Sunday over security row article – and now faces paying newspaper’s costs

Prince Harry today admitted defeat in a defamation case he brought against the Mail on Sunday on Sunday – on the day he was due to hand over documents.

The Duke of Sussex left his case just hours before his lawyers were required to provide a list of relevant documents.

They ultimately could have been avoided in the trial, which centered on claims that he had tried to mislead the public.

Instead, Harry threw in the towel, with his lawyers informing the High Court at 10am that he was ‘discontinuing’ his case.

He will now have to pay the newspaper’s £250,000 costs, along with his own lawyers’ fees – meaning a total legal bill of more than £750,000.

Harry sued the Mail on Sunday for defamation over an article which said his PR staff had tried to ‘twist’ a dispute with the Home Office over the decision to cut his taxpayer-funded police protection.

The Duke said this left him wrongly accused of trying to confuse the public.

Harry’s lawyers were so confident in Schillings that they asked Judge Nicklin to have the case decided in the duke’s favor without even having a trial.

But last month Judge Nicklin rejected the request, ruling that the newspaper had a “real prospect” of showing that statements made on his behalf were misleading.

The judge said the newspaper had ‘a real prospect of succeeding in demonstrating that an honest person could have considered that the claimant (the Duke) was responsible for attempting to mislead and confuse the public as to its true position’ .

His ruling meant that the case evolved into a defamation lawsuit.

As part of the normal legal process, prior to a confrontation in court, both parties have a duty to disclose to the other party all documents ‘relevant’ to the case.

Under the rules of legal fair play, this obligation applies even if a document could be potentially damaging to their side’s arguments.

It is not known which documents Harry’s lawyers would have prepared for ‘disclosure’.

The documents may contain emails or other messages, or something else, but that will never be known because a last minute decision was made to drop the case.

Today was the deadline for both sides to make public a list of relevant documents.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at the Invictus Games in Düsseldorf in September 2023

Instead, at 10.06am, Harry’s lawyers told the newspaper that they had filed a notice with the court saying: ‘The Duke of Sussex ceases all these claims.’

The case involved an article published in February 2022 reporting Harry’s separate legal action against the Home Office over the withdrawal of his police bodyguards. That case is still ongoing.

The Mail on Sunday article stated that Harry had tried to keep his battle for the Home Office secret from the public.

And it said the Duke’s ‘PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute’ by claiming Harry had offered to personally pay for police protection – while the Home Office had received no such offer at the time.

But the duke complained that the story suggested he had ‘improperly and cynically attempted to manipulate and confuse public opinion’.

He launched his defamation action, saying the article was “an attack on his honesty and integrity.” The Mail on Sunday has always disputed the claim and remained true to its journalism.

At a preliminary hearing in March last year, the newspaper’s QC showed the court an extract from an email in which Harry – rather than offering to pay for his security – argued he needed a job first , and wrote: ‘we couldn’t afford private security. until we could earn’.

The email was sent to the Queen’s private secretary Sir Edward Young three months after the royals’ infamous Sandringham summit in January 2020 to confirm Harry and Meghan’s departure from Britain.

At the ‘Sandringham Summit’ attended by the Queen, the Duke claims he made an offer to pay for his security.

His lawyer Justin Rushbrooke KC said Harry “naturally believed or assumed” that his offer would be passed on to the Home Office committee assessing royal security.

But Andrew Caldecott QC said on behalf of the newspaper that if Harry had indeed raised the subject at the Sandringham meeting, this would only apply if that offer had subsequently been passed on to the Government, because it was the Government who made security decisions and who were being sued by Harry.

The original article reported that no such offer of payment had been made to Ravec – the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures – nor was it mentioned in its lawyers’ pre-action letters to the ministry of the Interior.

The newspaper said Harry’s PR advisers had informed journalists from other media outlets and that the duke had offered to “personally pay for British police protection” and remained willing to do so.

It said his “spin doctors” were taking action, adding that such behavior was “ironic considering the prince now plays a role at a Silicon Valley firm tackling ‘disinformation’ online.”

In its defense against Harry’s defamation claim, the newspaper relied on the article being an ‘honest opinion’.

When the Duke tried to have this dismissed, Judge Nicklin dismissed the application, saying: ‘The defense of honest opinion is fundamental to the protection of freedom of expression under English law.’

At the time, it was one of six cases brought by the Duke of Sussex in the High Court against newspapers and the Home Office.

He has since won a case against Mirror Group Newspapers, and is still pursuing other ongoing cases against the publishers of The Sun and the Mail titles.