Harry and Meghan's 10 Lawsuits in 3 Years and What They Say About Couple

Prince Harry is poised to launch the 10th lawsuit that either he or Meghan Markle will have been involved in since 2019.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have already filed eight lawsuits between them, while Meghan has been sued for libel by her half-sister Samantha Markle.

And Harry's lawyers recently indicated they have begun the early stages of a 10th, which they expect to lodge at the High Court in London soon.

The spate of litigations began in September 2019, shortly before they quit the palace for a new life in North America.

Most of the cases related to the dealings with different sections of the media, although more recently Harry has turned his guns on the British government over the removal of his police security.

Police Protection and the British Government

The duke sued the U.K. Home Office over the decision to remove his police protection, taken by a committee called RAVEC, in February 2020.

Harry's legal team has argued that it is unsafe for him in Britain without Metropolitan Police bodyguards, and he has offered to pay to fund them to avoid a burden on the taxpayer.

And the case exposed persistent divisions between the Sussexes and palace staff—including Queen Elizabeth II's closest aide, her private secretary Sir Edward Young.

A court filing by his team on July 7 read: "Prior to the decision being taken, [Prince Harry] should have been given a clear and full explanation of the composition of RAVEC and those involved in its decision-making, i.e. that this included The Royal Household ("TRH")."

The document described "significant tensions" between Harry and Young and accused the royal household of failing to pass on his offer to pay to RAVEC.

However, government lawyers have been scathing about the judicial review case, which they say should never have been lodged.

A July 7, 2022, court filing seen by Newsweek read: "This is an exceptional case in which a very significant burden has been imposed by [Prince Harry] on the public purse, through pursuit of an unarguable claim and requiring detailed and lengthy engagement in advance of a permission decision.

"The public purse should not have to bear the cost of the conduct of this litigation and a claim which ought not to have been brought at all."

A judge is currently considering whether the case should be thrown out or whether Harry's argument is strong enough to proceed to the next stage.

Whichever way the court goes, this is not likely to be the end, however, as Harry's team also indicated during a July 7 hearing that they will file a second lawsuit against the Home Office.

The new case will focus on a decision taken in December 2021 that police protection cannot be paid for privately in circumstances where it has already been denied by RAVEC.

The litigation is at its earliest stage, though pre-action correspondence between the two sides has begun.

However, there is also a third case related to the dispute, a libel action Harry brought against an old tabloid enemy.

Harry and Meghan vs. The Mail on Sunday

Harry's latest libel case against The Mail on Sunday emerged from the newspaper's coverage of the first police protection lawsuit.

A February 2022 exclusive accused the duke of "attempting to mislead and confuse the public" over the nature of his Home Office litigation, according to a judgement handed down on July 8.

Judge Matthew Nicklin recently ruled the coverage had a defamatory meaning, which the newspaper must now defend at the next stage of the action.

His ruling read: "It may be possible to 'spin' facts in a way that does not mislead, but the allegation being made in the article was very much that the object was to mislead the public. That supplies the necessary element to make the meanings defamatory at common law."

The case is one of three the couple have filed between them against the tabloid and its publisher Associated Newspapers.

The first was Meghan's famous lawsuit against The Mail on Sunday over a private letter she sent her father, Thomas Markle, asking him to stop talking to the media.

The duchess won the case after a three-year saga that ended at the Court of Appeal and only after her private texts and emails were handed over by her former Communications Secretary Jason Knauf.

They showed Meghan and Harry authorized Knauf to supply material to the authors of the biography Finding Freedom and left her apologizing to the court.

The process was so grueling Meghan said in a witness statement she was at one stage concerned she might experience a second miscarriage brought on by the stress.

Archie Mountbatten-Windsor and the Paparazzi

The couple have only filed one lawsuit in America after paparazzi agency X17 used a drone to photograph their son Archie in the summer of 2020.

The toddler had played with his grandmother Doria Ragland on the private grounds of Tyler Perry's Los Angeles mansion, where they were living at the time. The pictures were published in the German mass-market celebrity magazine Bunte.

X17 apologized in October 2020 after a lawsuit filed at Los Angeles Superior Court.

It was not the only case filed against a picture agency, however. Harry and Meghan sued both the U.K. and U.S. arms of Splash News and Pictures at the High Court, in London.

The privacy lawsuit related to images taken of Meghan with Archie in a sling when he was a baby going for a walk in a park on Vancouver Island, Canada, where the Sussexes were based before relocating to California.

The U.K division settled out of court, while the U.S. arm was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Prince Harry and Historic Phone Hacking Allegations

Harry's first lawsuits related to historic allegations against Rupert Murdoch's U.K. newspaper publisher and the Mirror Group, which publishes U.K. tabloid the Daily Mirror and its sister titles.

The cases were both filed in September 2019 but show little signs of progress nearly three years later.

The case against Murdoch's News Group Newspapers had an initial flurry of court filings that fizzled out in July 2021.

The Mirror Group lawsuit is yet to lodge a publicly accessible court filing and does not appear to have made any progress since June 2020.

Both newspaper groups have been hit by hundreds of claims so it is possible Harry is waiting for his cases to come up, or alternatively, he may have lost interest as other issues have forced their way onto his radar.

Samantha Markle vs. Meghan

Samantha Markle's lawsuit is the only one the couple did not file themselves and accuses Meghan of libel, relating in part to her comments during the Oprah Winfrey interview and the biography Finding Freedom.

The duchess' half-sister is represented by the Ticktin Law Group, the same firm that represented Donald Trump in his action against Hilary Clinton over the 2016 election.

A recent court filing read: "The Amended Complaint specifically alleges
that the false and defamatory information published within Finding Freedom on
August 11, 2020, came directly from the Duchess."

It added: "Mrs. Markle includes three defamatory and false statements the
Duchess made during her CBS Interview with Oprah Winfrey in her Amended
Complaint. Including that: (1) the Duchess was "an only child," (2) who only
met Mrs. Markle "a handful of times," and that (3) Mrs. Markle only changed
her surname to "Markle" after the Duchess started dating Prince Harry so that
Mrs. Markle could cash in on her newfound fame."

Meghan's team is trying to get the case thrown out, arguing in a June court filing: "This is a meritless defamation case."

It added: "In March 2022, [Samantha Markle] filed her original complaint identifying 17 separate allegedly defamatory statements.

"The complaint failed for numerous reasons, as Meghan explained in her motion to dismiss.

"[Samantha Markle] seemingly agreed. She did not oppose the motion to dismiss and instead [amended her complaint], which abandoned roughly half of her case.

"[Samantha Markle] also added irrelevant and spiteful allegations that are false and do not belong in a complaint—e.g., that Meghan once 'hung up the phone on her.'"

What the Cases Say About Harry and Meghan

Harry and Meghan's early strategy was to put the U.K. press on trial, albeit in three separate civil actions.

The 2019 litigation covered three of the biggest newspaper publishers in the country by circulation and Meghan's initial complaint against The Mail on Sunday included a broad-ranging attack on five divisions of the same newspaper group.

The duchess alleged an agenda to paint her in a false and damaging light, while Harry's statement announcing the action spoke drew comparisons to the treatment of Princess Diana.

As they quit the palace, their next two cases were filed against paparazzi picture agencies as the world's photographers scrambled to serve the media pictures to accompany the global headlines the couple attracted during the most dramatic era in royal reporting since Diana and Charles' marriage disintegrated in the 1990s.

In the early stages of their post-royal lives, the couple were holed up, first in Los Angeles and then in Montecito, Santa Barbara. However, as lockdown restrictions eased, Harry had his first two trips back to Britain in 2021.

It was after the second, in late June and early July 2021, that Harry had a bad experience with photographers following a charity event in London, leading him to begin the action against the U.K. Home Office.

The fact he has now launched three lawsuits related to his police protection suggests the decision to strip him of the bodyguards may still loom as large on his list of priorities as the more widely publicized battles with the media.