Meghan Markle wins privacy case against UK tabloid

High Court judge granted the Duchess of Sussex "summary judgment" in her claim for misuse of private information against the company, Associated Newspapers, over the publication of the 2018 letter in its outlet The Mail.

London: The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, has won a legal case against the publisher of a British tabloid newspaper that printed extracts of a letter she wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle.

According to E! News, on Thursday (local time), a High Court judge granted the Duchess of Sussex “summary judgment” in her claim for misuse of private information against the company, Associated Newspapers, over the publication of the 2018 letter in its outlet The Mail.

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He wrote that she “had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the Letter would remain private. The Mail Articles interfered with that reasonable expectation.”

The duchess said in a statement, “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 dehumanizing practices.”

She further added, “These tactics (and those of their sister publications MailOnline and The Daily Mail) are not new; in fact, they’ve been going on for far too long without consequence. For these outlets, it’s a game. For me and so many others, it’s real life, real relationships, and very real sadness. The damage they have done and continue to do runs deep.”

Meghan had sued Associated Newspapers, back in 2019 after its Mail on Sunday newspaper and MailOnline website published extracts of a five-page, handwritten letter that she had sent to her estranged father a year earlier, shortly after her and Prince Harry’s royal wedding, which Thomas did not attend owing to illness.

As per E! News, this win marked the biggest legal victory against the press for Meghan and Harry, who stepped down from their roles as senior members of the royal family last spring.