On Thursday, three judges affirmed a previous judgement by a High Court that the dispute over The Mail’s publication of a letter from Meghan Markle to her estranged father did not require a trial because it was “manifestly excessive and hence unlawful.” As The New York Times reported, the judges agreed that Markle had a “reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private.”
Meghan Markle continues to slowly turn the British establishment into a farce. You love to see it.
This long-running legal drama came about when the tabloid clearly violated Markle’s privacy by publishing a letter she wrote to her father back in 2018. In the letter, she accused her father, Thomas Markle, of breaking her heart with his behavior following her engagement to Prince Harry. That included him speaking to the press about her, bringing in her other half-siblings on his side of the family to do the same, and just being a media hound willing to make his daughter look bad for clout.
In response to the ruling, the Duchess of Sussex released the following statement (via PEOPLE):
“This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what’s right. While this win is precedent setting, what matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create.”
“From day one, I have treated this lawsuit as an important measure of right versus wrong. The defendant has treated it as a game with no rules,” Meghan continued. “The longer they dragged it out, the more they could twist facts and manipulate the public (even during the appeal itself), making a straightforward case extraordinarily convoluted in order to generate more headlines and sell more newspapers—a model that rewards chaos above truth. In the nearly three years since this began, I have been patient in the face of deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks.”
And in the end, she won the battles and the war.
There was a minor hiccup when it was revealed that Meghan Markle did speak to authors of a book about the issue with texts and emails, but it was seen as “at best, an unfortunate lapse of memory on her part.” The court stated that the texts and emails provided “little assistance” to the issues being heard.
“The central question in this case was whether the (original trial) judge, Mr Justice Warby, had been right to grant summary judgment for breach of privacy and breach of copyright to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,” Master of the Rolls, Sir Geoffrey Vos, stated in court on Thursday.
They agreed that they were right and sided with Meghan once again.
(image: USA Network)
(via New York Times, image:Jonathan Brady – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
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