Meghan Markle Got A Front-Page Apology From The UK Tabloid That Published Her Private Letter To Her

The publishers of the Mail on Sunday and Mail Online were required to print a statement acknowledging Meghan's legal victory after losing a lawsuit. #MeghanMarkle #GotA #FrontPageApology #FromThe #UKTabloid #ThatPublished #HerPrivate #LetterTo #HerFather A UK newspaper was forced to print an admission that it had violated the rights of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, on Sunday after losing a privacy and copyright infringement lawsuit. The court-mandated apology and an unspecified amount of money in financial reparations mark the end of a multiyear legal battle between Meghan and Associated Newspapers Limited, the parent company of the Mail on Sunday and Mail Online. The duchess sued ANL in October 2019 for violating her privacy and copyright rights after the company published excerpts from a handwritten letter she sent her estranged father, Thomas Markle, in the Mail on Sunday and in a number of stories published on Mail Online. "Following a hearing on 19-20 January, 2021, and a further hearing on 5 May, 2021, the Court has given judgment for the Duchess of Sussex on her claim for copyright infringement," the statement said. "The Court found that Associated Newspapers infringed her copyright by publishing extracts of her handwritten letters to her father in the Mail on Sunday and on Mail Online. Financial remedies have been agreed." On Feb. 11, High Court Lord Justice Mark Warby ruled in Meghan's favor in a summary judgment, a type of verdict granted when a judge determines that no trial is needed because the evidence is so overwhelming. In his decision, Warby wrote that “there is no prospect that a different judgment would be reached after a trial." ANL's lawyers appealed the ruling, claiming that Warby was wrong to award Meghan victory via summary judgment and arguing for the right to present their case at trial — something the duchess has fought against from the beginning of the proceedings. "To permit the defense to go to trial would only have facilitated further invasions of [Meghan's] privacy," her lawyers wrote to the UK Court of Appeal in November. Meghan's legal team accused ANL of pushing for a trial because it would give the tabloid company "the opportunity to profit handsomely from the media circus that would inevitably result." During the appeal proceedings in November, lawyers for ANL argued that Warby made his judgment without knowing all of the information — and presented new evidence in the form of written testimony from the Sussexes’ former communications secretary Jason Knauf that showed inconsistencies in Meghan's statements to the court about the letter and her expectations of privacy. According to Knauf, Meghan composed the letter knowing that her father might give it to the press. And although Meghan swore under oath that she never coordinated with members of the media to share private information, Knauf provided the court with emails between himself and the duchess discussing what she wanted him to say in a secret briefing with two reporters who were writing what proved to be a very sympathetic biography of the Sussexes. In response to Knauf's revelations, in a witness statement filed Nov. 11, Meghan apologized to the court “for the fact that [she] had not remembered these exchanges" and swore she “had no intention to mislead the defendant or the court.” However, the fact that Meghan — intentionally or unintentionally — was not entirely truthful ultimately had no effect on the Court of Appeal, which ruled in her favor in a judgment issued Dec. 2.