British tabloid calls for full trial after losing privacy suit over Meghan Markle’s letter to estranged father

Lawyers for a British tabloid that just lost a privacy lawsuit for publishing parts of a letter the duchess of Sussex wrote to her estranged father plan to appeal the ruling, they told London’s High Court on Tuesday.

Associated Newspapers, the parent company of Mail on Sunday and the MailOnline website, claims in newly filed court documents that the case deserves a full trial and that its bid to overturn last month’s ruling “would have a real prospect of success.” Meghan Markle won part of her lawsuit when Judge Mark Warby granted summary judgment on her privacy claim, eliminating the need for a big trial.

The wife of Prince Harry and former “Suits” star sued the publisher over five articles featuring excerpts from a handwritten letter to her dad, Thomas Markle, after her royal wedding in 2018. She accused the company of breaching her privacy and infringing on her copyright by reproducing parts of the letter.

One of those articles ran in February 2019 with a headline that read in part, “Revealed: The letter showing true tragedy of Meghan’s rift with father she says has ‘broken her heart into a million pieces.’”

Meghan Markle won last month's ruling.
Meghan Markle won last month's ruling.


Meghan Markle won last month's ruling. (WPA Pool/)

In his Feb. 11 ruling, the judge said the tabloid had misused Meghan’s private information and infringed her copyright and that she “had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private.” Warby also ruled that publishing large portions of the letter was “manifestly excessive and hence unlawful.”

But the judge did not grant summary judgment on Meghan’s copyright infringement claim, saying a “limited trial” should be held sometime in the fall to decide the “minor” issue of whether the duchess was “the sole author” and lone copyright holder of the letter.

Lawyers for Associated Newspapers told the court Tuesday that Warby failed to sufficiently consider that Meghan “undermined or diminished” the weight of her own privacy by collaborating with the authors of a People magazine story about the letter and with the authors of a book that features references to the letter. The attorneys reportedly insist that further evidence would be available if a full trial is allowed to take place.

Meghan’s lawyers, meanwhile, asked the judge to order the tabloid to remove the five articles from its website and to run a front-page statement about her legal victory. They also want the company to hand over or destroy any copy of the letter it still has.

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“The defendant has failed to deliver up copies it has of the letter such that the threat to infringe and further to misuse her private information remains real and, inexplicably, the defendant has still not removed the infringing articles from MailOnline,” Ian Mill, an attorney for Meghan, said in a written submission.

Markle, 39, and Harry, 36, got married in May 2018 and have a son, Archie, as well as another baby on the way. The couple quit their royal duties and moved to California last year, citing the British media’s racist and intrusive practices as one of the main reasons for their decision.

Harry recently won a lawsuit against the same publisher for a pair of stories that accused him of losing contact with the Royal Marines.

With News Wire Services

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