Meghan Markle’s battle against the Mail on Sunday is finally over! On Thursday, December 2nd, the Court of Appeal in London ruled in her favor regarding her privacy and copyright infringement case against Mail on Sunday publishers Associated Newspapers, after they printed parts of a private handwritten letter she wrote to her father shortly after the royal wedding in 2018. The newspaper reproduced parts of the private letter to Thomas Markle in five separate articles, which it published back in February 2019.
The Court of Appeal accepted Meghan’s argument that her letter to her father – which he gave to the Mail on Sunday as a way to address what he described as “unfair” stories about him – in August 2018 was “deeply personal,” saying that the letter’s contents were “personal, private and not matters of legitimate public interest.”
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So what does this mean for the Duchess of Sussex? The court's decision means that the case will not proceed to trial, and the 40-year-old mom-of-two is set to receive substantial financial damages from Associated Newspapers, as well as a public apology printed on the front page of the Mail on Sunday, and also on the homepage of the Mail Online website. (We wonder what Piers Morgan, who now has a column in the Mail Online and makes no secret of his feelings about the Duchess, will make of that…)
Meghan was understandably very happy with the court's ruling, and issued a statement shortly afterwards. "This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what's right," the statement began. "While this win is precedent setting, what matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create."
"From day one, I have treated this lawsuit as an important measure of right versus wrong. The defendant has treated it as a game with no rules," the Duchess continued. "The longer they dragged it out, the more they could twist facts and manipulate the public (even during the appeal itself), making a straightforward case extraordinarily convoluted in order to generate more headlines and sell more newspapers – a model that rewards chaos above truth. In the nearly three years since this began, I have been patient in the face of deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks.
"The courts have held the defendant to account and my hope is that we all begin to do the same. Because as far removed as it may seem from your personal life, it's not. Tomorrow it could be you. These harmful practices don't happen once in a blue moon – they are a daily fail that divide us and we all deserve better."
Lawyers for Associated Newspapers argued that publishing sections of the letter was part of Meghan's father's right to reply following the article in People magazine which alleged that he was "cruelly cold-shouldering" his daughter before her wedding to Prince Harry. However, while reading a summary of the court's decision, Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of Rolls, said: "It was hard to see what evidence could have been adduced at trial that would have altered the situation."
He continued: "The judge had been in as good a position as any trial judge to look at the article in People magazine, the letter and the Mail on Sunday articles to decide if publication of the contents of the letter was appropriate to rebut the allegations made against Mr Markle. The judge had correctly decided that, whilst it might have been proportionate to publish a very small part of the letter for that purpose, it was not necessary to publish half the contents of the letter as Associated Newspapers had done."
