Prince Harry Sues Associated Newspapers For Libel After Meghan Markle's Legal Victory: Report

Prince Harry followed his wife's footsteps by launching a legal battle against Associated Newspapers.

Prince Harry sued Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, for libel for publishing a report about his security arrangement. The Duke of Sussex filed the court papers Wednesday afternoon, The Guardian reported.

According to the outlet, the complaint was related to an article published by the Mail on Sunday with the headline "Revealed: How Harry tried to keep his legal fight over bodyguards secret."

Daily Mail cited High Court documents and claimed that the duke allegedly sought a far-reaching confidentiality order to keep his legal battle to reinstate his police protection a secret. However, the Home Office allegedly argued for transparency, saying "there must be a sufficiently good reason, in the wider public interest, to justify the departure from open justice that such an order involves."

Both sides eventually agreed that some papers would be accessible to the public. The Home Office also agreed to carry out a "confidentiality exercise" to determine what should be kept secret.

Prince Harry is currently involved in a litigation case against the Home Office over his request to personally pay for police protection when in the U.K. The royal lost his taxpayer-funded police protection when he and his wife, Meghan Markle, decided to step back from their royal duties in 2020.

Prince Harry challenged the Home Office's decision after rejecting his request twice. He argued that the U.K. "is and always will be his home."

In his claim, the Duke of Sussex said that Ravec, the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, reached an unlawful and unreasonable decision because he already offered to pay for security, as he remained in the immediate line of succession to the throne, the BBC reported.

Aside from the libel case, Prince Harry also brought up privacy claims against News Group Newspapers, the publisher of The Sun and Mirror Group Newspapers, now Reach, over an alleged phone hacking and unlawful information gathering.

Prince Harry's legal action against Associated Newspapers came after the Duchess of Sussex scored a huge victory against the British tabloid for her privacy case. Markle sued the U.K. newspaper for publishing parts of a five-page letter she wrote for her dad, Thomas Markle Sr., in 2019. After a lengthy court battle, the court favored the duchess and ruled that the Associated Newspapers infringed her copyright by publishing extracts of her handwritten letter.

The newspaper filed for an appeal in an attempt to overturn the judge's decision. However, in December 2021, the Court of Appeal in London upheld Judge Mark Warby's decision.

"This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what's right," Markle said following the Court of Appeal's decision. "While this win is precedent-setting, what matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create."

Markle received a public apology from the British tabloid, a symbolic $1 and unspecified amount in damages after winning the case.