Meghan Markle, victorious in her lawsuit against the British press for her privacy

Good news for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Meghan Markle has won this Thursday the last phase of her litigation against a major UK press group, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publisher of “Daily Mail”, “Mail on Sunday” and “MailOnLine”; to protect her privacy, following the publication by several newspapers of a personal letter she wrote to her father in 2018.

“This is a victory not only for me, but for anyone who has been afraid to stand up for the right thing.” Markle says in a statement celebrating her victory, which she believes that the precedent will serve to combat the culture of the British tabloid press, conditioned “to be cruel and take advantage of the lies and pain” that it spreads.

“From day one, I have treated this lawsuit as an important measure of what is right and what is wrong. But they have treated it like a game with no rules,” Markle notes in the note, where she accuses the opposing side of trying to twist and manipulate the process to generate more headlines.

“In the three years since this started, I have been patient in the face of deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks. Today, the courts have ruled in my favor, once again, cementing that the ‘Mail on Sunday’, owned by Lord Jonathan Rothermere, has broken the law”, declares the Duchess.

The London Court of Appeal today rejected the appeal presented by the publisher, which requested that two previous rulings be brought to trial, which were summarily resolved in a shorter process, as the judge considered that the evidence was clear in Markle’s favor.

The magistrates pointed out that “it is difficult to see what new evidence could have been provided in a trial that would have altered the situation” and they considered the previous conclusions of the Superior Court “correct”.

Misuse of private information

In 2018, Markle sued ANL for misuse of private information, violation of “copyright” (copyright) and violation of data protection law, by publishing excerpts from the letter she addressed to her father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018 in 2019.

In two summary opinions in February and May, the Superior concluded that the newspapers had violated the privacy of the Duchess by publishing it in 2019.

While Associated Newspapers Limited argued during the process that the text was in fact part of a duchess image strategy, and that it had also been written by an assistant of his, so the rights belonged to the monarchy.