Meghan received millions in damages!
The Duchess sued the Associated Newspaper over five articles reproducing excerpts from her “personal and private” letter to Father Thomas Markle in August 2018.
The publishers of the British tabloid Mail on Sunday have agreed to pay financial compensation to the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, three years after she started a battle for privacy for reproducing parts of her handwritten letter to her father, writes the Guardian.
The paper released a press release at the bottom of the page on Sunday informing readers that the Duchess had won a copyright lawsuit against the publisher of Associated Newspapers for articles published in the Mail on Sunday that were also broadcast on Mail Online. On the third page, the tabloid published a 64-word news item stating that the publisher had infringed copyright and that an agreement on financial compensation had been reached.
The story was also published on the Mail Online website on Christmas Day at 11:58 p.m., with links to court rulings. The Duchess sued the Associated Newspaper over five articles reproducing excerpts from her “personal and private” letter to Father Thomas Markle in August 2018. Meghan Markle won the case earlier this year when a High Court judge, Lord Justice Warby, ruled in her favor without a trial.
The Associated Newspapers appealed the ruling, arguing that the case should have been discussed in court, but Judges Sir Geoffrey Vos, Ladies Victoria Sharp and Lord Justice Bean dismissed it in early December.
They explained that the Duchess had "reasonable expectations" when it came to respecting privacy regarding the content of the letter. “The content was personal and private and was not a subject of public interest,” Judge Vos explained, and Markle subsequently publicly called for a transformation of the tabloid industry. The Duchess’s costs before the Associated Newspapers filed an appeal are estimated at £ 1.5 million, but that figure could be even higher after the appeal is filed.
The court also rejected an attempt at appeals by the Associated Newspapers, which publishes Mail Online, the Daily Mail, as well as its Sunday version of Mail on Sunday, to hold a trial for publishing parts of Meghan’s letter to her father, which the Duchess of Sussex believes violated her privacy.
Thanks to this decision, Meghan Markle should not appear at the trial, where her father Thomas Markle would also appear as one of the witnesses. By the way, a judge of the High Court had already ruled in favor of the Duchess earlier this year in the case of her privacy and copyright, and this decision has now been officially confirmed.
