Prince Harry Drops Libel Lawsuit Against ‘Daily Mail’

Prince Harry has dropped his libel lawsuit against the Daily Mail, one of the many legal actions the former royal has filed against British tabloids.

The libel case stemmed from an article the Daily Mail published in February 2022 that questioned the Duke of Sussex’s efforts to retain publicly funded protection from the British government despite his well-publicized split from the Royal Family.

However, Prince Harry — who also filed lawsuits in relation to phone hacking allegations against British publishers, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers and the Mirror Group — was given a setback in his libel suit against Associated Newspapers Ltd after a judge ruled in December that Harry’s legal team hadn’t proven their case pre-trial, resulting in Harry being ordered to pay the publisher’s legal fees of 50,000 pounds, the Associated Press reports.

Given the judge’s initial ruling, Prince Harry’s legal team told the High Court in London that he was withdrawing the libel lawsuit before it went to trial.

In December, Prince Harry emerged victorious in his lawsuit against the Mirror Group Newspapers over improper snooping into his personal life after the judge found that the publisher’s papers — including The Mirror, The Sunday Mirror, and The Sunday People — had engaged in “unlawful information gathering” tactics, including hacking Harry’s phone (or the phones of his associates) and intercepting his voicemails. He was awarded £140,600 in damages (about $178,000).

Harry is involved in similar lawsuits involving tabloid publishers. One case, against the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Group Newspapers, will head to trial next year, though at a hearing in July, a judge threw out the phone hacking charges because they happened outside the statute of limitations.