The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, has won a landmark high court privacy case against the Mail on Sunday, hailing her victory as a “comprehensive win” over the paper’s “illegal and dehumanising practices”.
Meghan, 39, sued Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) – the publisher of The Mail On Sunday and MailOnline – over a series of articles which reproduced parts of the letter sent to her 76-year-old father Thomas Markle in August 2018.
She took legal action for alleged misuse of private information, copyright infringement and breach of the Data Protection Act over five articles published in February 2019, which included extracts from the letter.
In a ruling on Thursday, Mr Justice Warby granted Meghan “summary judgment” in relation to her claim for misuse of private information, meaning she has won that part of the case without going to trial.
The judge also granted summary judgment in relation to most of the duchess’ copyright claim, but said the issue of whether Meghan was “the sole author” of the letter – an issue he said was “of minor significance in the overall context” – should be determined at a trial.
He said: “It was, in short, a personal and private letter. 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.
“The claimant had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private. The articles interfered with that reasonable expectation.”
In a statement after the ruling, the duchess said: “After two long years of pursuing litigation, I am grateful to the courts for holding Associated Newspapers and The Mail On Sunday to account for their illegal and dehumanising practices.”
She added: “The world needs reliable, fact-checked, high-quality news. What The Mail On Sunday and its partner publications do is the opposite.
“We all lose when misinformation sells more than truth, when moral exploitation sells more than decency, and when companies create their business model to profit from people’s pain.
“But, for today, with this comprehensive win on both privacy and copyright, we have all won. We now know, and hope it creates legal precedent, that you cannot take somebody’s privacy and exploit it in a privacy case, as the defendant has blatantly done over the past two years.”
A spokesperson for Associated Newspapers said: “We are very surprised by today’s summary judgment and disappointed at being denied the chance to have all the evidence heard and tested in open court at a full trial. We are carefully considering the judgment’s contents and will decide in due course whether to lodge an appeal.”
Related: British guilty of ‘feigned amnesia’ over imperial legacy, Irish president says
Since you are here
Since you are here, we wanted to ask for your help.
Journalism in Britain is under threat. The government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and our media is run by a handful of billionaires, most of whom reside overseas and all of them have strong political allegiances and financial motivations.
Our mission is to hold the powerful to account. It is vital that free media is allowed to exist to expose hypocrisy, corruption, wrongdoing and abuse of power. But we can't do it without you.
If you can afford to contribute a small donation to the site it will help us to continue our work in the best interests of the public. We only ask you to donate what you can afford, with an option to cancel your subscription at any point.
To donate or subscribe to The London Economic, click here.
The TLE shop is also now open, with all profits going to supporting our work.
The shop can be found here.
You can also SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER .
