Prince Harry has filed a fresh libel lawsuit against the Associated Newspapers, the owner of Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, which is also the same publication embroiled in a separate legal battle versus his wife, Meghan Markle.
According to The Telegraph, the Duke of Sussex, through his legal representatives, filed the lawsuit against the Associated Newspapers at London's High Court on Nov. 27 in relation to a story published in October. The court papers, however, have not yet been made public. Thus, further details will not be known for weeks.
But, Prince Harry has had an issue with a Daily Mail story that claimed he had not made attempts to contact the Royal Marines after he stepped down from his royal roles in March. The tabloid allegedly spoke to sources who said that the Duke of Sussex hasn't written, called, or emailed them since his last appearance as a working royal.
Shortly after the story came out, the lawyers of Prince Harry sent a warning to the publication. A spokesperson told Vanity Fair that the report was "false and defamatory" when the Duke of Sussex had "many conversations" with his former colleagues in the military during the COVID-19 lockdown. According to Entertainment Tonight, the Duke of Sussex's camp won't make any comments at this stage.
Harry, who served for 10 years in the royal armed forces before becoming a full-time working royal, was the Captain-General of the Royal Marines. He inherited the role from his grandfather, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who retired from public service in 2017.
However, as part of his arrangement with Queen Elizabeth, Harry had to give up all of his military roles after announcing that he's stepping down as a working royal with Meghan. The couple then moved to the United States in the middle of March and hasn't returned to London due to the pandemic.
In October 2019, Meghan filed a lawsuit against the Associated Newspapers for privacy breach and misuse of information under the Data Protection Act 2018 after Daily Mail published her private letters for her father, Thomas Markle. The trial was supposed to begin in January 2021, but Meghan asked a judge to move the date to the fall of next year due to "confidential" reasons.
When Meghan filed the lawsuit, her husband released a statement denouncing the privacy breach. The Duke of Sussex said that his wife has become another victim of the British tabloid press and was bullied and "vilified almost daily." He said that the attacks against Meghan have been escalating since she announced her pregnancy in 2018.
Harry accused a "select media" of playing a game against an unwilling party. The duke said that he doesn't want to just stand by and do nothing against this type of media because it will be like history repeating itself. The Duke of Sussex's mother, Princess Diana, was killed in a vehicle collision in 1997 as the paparazzi allegedly chased her.
