An article in the Mail on Sunday which claimed Prince Harry was trying to keep his legal action against the Home Office secret contained some words which were defamatory in meaning, a High Court judge has ruled in the first stage of the claim by the prince for slander.
The Duke of Sussex has filed a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) days after the Mail on Sunday (MoS) published an article about his legal challenge to the Home Office’s decision not to allow him to personally pay for police protection for himself and his family while in the UK.
The article, published online and in print on February 19 and 20 respectively, was headlined: “How Harry tried to keep his legal battle against bodyguards a secret … then minutes after the MoS broke the story, its PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute .”
In a written judgment published on Friday, Mr Justice Nicklin rejected the prince’s argument that the article accused him of lying, saying the article clearly claimed he was “representing” facts that a “hypothetical ordinary reasonable reader” would distinguishing from lying.
However, he added: “It is possible to ‘spin’ facts in a way that is not misleading, but the claim made in the article was largely that the aim was to mislead the public.” This provides the necessary element to make the meanings defamatory at common law.’
The decision is a boost for the Prince in his defamation claim against ANL and means the onus will now be on the MoS to justify the publication of the defamatory words when the case goes to full trial.
Nicklin wrote that the “natural and ordinary meaning” of the article was that Harry “is responsible for public statements issued on his behalf stating that he is prepared to pay for police protection in the UK and that his legal challenge is yes the government’s refusal to allow him to do so, given that the true position revealed in the documents produced in the court proceedings is that he only made the offer to pay after the proceedings had begun; and as such, the plaintiff is responsible for attempting to mislead and confuse the public as to the true position, which is ironic given that he now had a public role in dealing with the “misinformation”.
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He said those meanings were defamatory, as was a passage that suggested Harry was “seeking unduly broad restrictions on the confidentiality of legal proceedings”.
Nicklin said: “I must reiterate that the decision made in this decision is solely about the objective meaning of the article published by the defendant for the purposes of the plaintiff’s defamation claim. This is the first phase of a defamation claim. The next step will be for the defendant to file a defense to the claim. It will be a matter for determination later in the proceedings whether the claim succeeds or fails and if so on what grounds.’
Harry, 37, is also bringing privacy claims against News Group Newspapers, which publishes the Sun, and Mirror Group Newspapers, now Reach, which publishes the Mirror, for alleged phone hacking and illegal information gathering.
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