The High Court in London ruled on Tuesday that Prince Harry's bid to pay for his own police protection while in the UK has been denied. The Duke of Sussex's legal challenge was aimed at reversing the decision to withdraw the police protection he received as a working royal after stepping down from his royal duties. According to the UK's Home Office, the decision to withdraw the protection was made by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (RAVEC), which argued that it was not appropriate for wealthy individuals to fund their own protective services from specialist police, particularly when it has been determined that the public interest does not warrant publicly-funded protective security.
While this legal case is one of several ongoing lawsuits that Prince Harry is undertaking in the UK, he is expected to return to London next month to testify in a separate trial regarding phone-hacking claims against the Mirror Newspaper Group (MNG). The trial, which began on May 10 and is expected to last seven weeks, involves Prince Harry and three other claimants representing dozens of celebrities accusing MNG's titles of obtaining private information through phone hacking and other illicit means between 1991 and 2011.
While the newspaper publisher is contesting most of the allegations, citing insufficient evidence of phone hacking in all four cases, Harry and his wife, Meghan, have filed several lawsuits against British tabloids, accusing them of breaching their privacy and publishing false stories.
On a related note, last week, Prince Harry and Meghan were involved in a car chase with photographers in New York which the couple's spokesperson claimed could have had catastrophic results. The paparazzi followed the couple after leaving the Women of Vision Awards at the Ziegfeld Ballroom, causing the couple to become shaken. This incident has only highlighted the Duke of Sussex's vocal concerns about his family's security, referring to the treatment that his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, received before her tragic death in 1997 as a result of a high-speed car crash in Paris.