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Meghan Markle ‘faces more court drama’ in privacy battle with UK Tabloid
Meghan Markle’s victory in her privacy suit against a British tabloid publisher may be short-lived, according to Express, after a High Court judge granted Associated Newspapers the right to appeal the court’s finding that the Mail on Sunday violated the duchess’ privacy.
The princess was poised to get an apology after a court decided that the major newspaper violated her privacy by publishing excerpts from a five-page letter she sent to her father, Thomas Markle.
The duchess, 39, sued ANL for a series of stories that included excerpts from a “heartfelt” letter sent by Mr Markle, 76, in August 2018.
In February, Lord Justice Warby gave Meghan a summary judgment, which means that the High Court determined that the evidence was so strong that the Mail on Sunday had breached her privacy by publishing the letter excerpts that there was no need for a trial. The only unanswered issue was whether Meghan was the sole owner of the letter’s contents. The court determined in May that Meghan was the sole author of the letter and did not receive outside assistance from aides in its preparation.
The judge ordered The Mail On Sunday to print a front-page apology to Meghan last month.
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He also ordered that the statement be posted on MailOnline for a week, with a link to the entire court decision on Meghan’s victory.
On page three of the same issue of the newspaper, it must be stated that the High Court ruled in favor of the Duchess on her claim for copyright infringement.
It must also contain the following statement: “The court determined that Associated Newspapers infringed her copyright by publishing excerpts of her handwritten letter to her father in The Mail On Sunday and MailOnline.”
ANL was originally denied permission to appeal that judgment, but instead moved straight to the Court of Appeal against the order compelling both The Mail On Sunday and MailOnline to publish the apology.
Last month, the publication also gained the right to publish the message in a smaller font than was initially requested.
The newspaper has now announced that its appeal against this decision has been approved.
It comes after the court ruled that publishing Meghan’s letter to her father was “manifestly excessive and hence unlawful.”
“It was, in short, a personal and private letter,” the judge said.
“The majority of what was published was about the claimant’s own behaviour, her feelings of anguish about her father’s behaviour, as she saw it, and the resulting rift between them.
“These are inherently private and personal matters.”
He said “the only tenable justification for any such interference was to correct some inaccuracies about the letter”, contained in an article in People magazine, published just days before ANL’s five articles, which featured an interview with five friends of Meghan.
He also said that ANL’s claims about ownership of the letter’s copyright “seem to me to occupy the shadowland between improbability and unreality.”
“We are pleased with the Court of Appeal’s decision to grant us permission to appeal against the summary judgments handed down by the High Court, and its recognition of the exceptional public interest in the issues raised by the case,” a spokeswoman for the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline told The Times.
Meghan’s legal counsel said that the Sussex family is “confident” that the verdict against the Mail on Sunday will be maintained.
“The Duchess has already won her legal case against the Mail on Sunday on all claims, after years of pursuing accountability from the publisher for wrongdoing,” they added.
“We are confident that Mr Justice Warby’s strong judgment against the Mail will be upheld, and we support the Court of Appeal’s further review of the legal rights that were confirmed to have been violated in Mr Justice Warby’s ruling.”
Meghan’s relationship with her father, Thomas Markle, fell apart in the months leading up to her wedding to Prince Harry in May 2018. Thomas, who was notorious for speaking to the public about his daughter, devastated her by arranging for a paparazzo to create false candid pictures of him. Meghan wrote to him in August of that year, expressing her heartbreak and dismay at his treachery. They haven’t talked since just before her wedding.
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