Prince Harry has just won a defamation suit against Associated Newspaper, which publishes the Mail on Sunday and the MailOnline website. The latter claimed in two articles published last October that he no longer had contact with the Royal Marines.
Mired in legal battles, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry finally see the end of the tunnel in one of their cases against Associated Newspapers. The Duke of Sussex has officially accepted the apology from the publisher of Mail on Sunday and the MailOnline website.
The latter, through two articles published in October, had directly attacked Princess Diana’s youngest son. By virtue of an agreement validated by the courts on 1 February, Prince William’s brother was able to obtain damages.
As a reminder, Harry sued the press group for defamation, because of two “almost identical” publications claiming that he “had not been in contact” with the Royal Marines since March, when the Megxit was launched.
The High Court in London has therefore sided with Archie’s father, who has already announced, through his lawyer Jenny Afia, that he will donate the money to the Invictus Games Foundation. An organisation he set up to help wounded soldiers.
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Personal attack on the Duke’s person
Before the High Court in London, Prince Harry’s solicitor had found the stories published by Associated Newspapers to be “baseless, false and defamatory”. They “not only constituted a personal attack on the Duke’s person, but also wrongly called into question his service in this country,” she argued.
An argument that won Prince Harry’s case. On 27 December, the Mail On Sunday published an apology, acknowledging that the Duke had been in contact with the Royal Marines.
However, the war against the press group is not over. For her part, Meghan Markle is still trying to avoid a lawsuit against the publisher. The publisher is accused by the duchess of invading her privacy by publishing excerpts from a handwritten letter addressed to her father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018.
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