Meghan calls for tabloid industry overhaul as Mail on Sunday loses appeal | Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

The Duchess of Sussex called for an overhaul of the tabloid industry and said she had shown patience in the face of deception, intimidation and calculated attacks as The Mail on Sunday lost its appeal in his three-year battle for privacy with her over a letter to her foreign father.

Meghan sued Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), also a publisher of Mail Online, for five articles reproducing parts of the personal and private letter to Thomas Markle, 77, in August 2018.

The Duchess, 40, won her case earlier this year when a High Court judge handed down summary judgment in her favor without needing a trial. But ANL has appealed on the grounds that the case should be tried on Meghan’s claims, including for breach of privacy and copyright.

Dismissing the appeal, Court of Appeal Judges Sir Geoffrey Vos, Dame Victoria Sharp and Lord Justice Bean upheld Lord Justice Warbys’ decision to grant summary judgment and ruled the Duchess had a reasonable expectation of the matter confidentiality in the content of the letter.

This content was personal, private and not of legitimate public interest, Vos said in a summary of the decision read aloud.

In a statement, the Duchess said: This is a victory not only for me, but for anyone who has ever been afraid to stand up for what is right. While this victory sets a precedent, 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 the pain they create.

From day one, I treated this trial as an important measure of good versus evil. The accused treated it like a game without rules. The longer they hung around, the more they could distort the facts and manipulate the audience (even during the call itself), making a simple case extraordinarily convoluted in order to generate more headlines and sell more newspapers a model that rewards chaos. above the truth.

For almost three years since this began, I have been patient with deception, intimidation and calculated attacks. Today the courts ruled in my favor again, confirming that The Mail on Sunday, owned by Lord Jonathan Rothermere, broke the law. The courts have held the accused to account and I hope we all start to do the same. Because as far away as it sounds from your personal life, it isn’t.

Tomorrow it could be you. These harmful practices don’t happen once in a blue moon, they are a daily failure that divides us, and we all deserve better.

Rejecting the ANL’s argument that the publication of the excerpts was justified to correct a negative image of Thomas Markle in US People magazine, the judges said it was not a justified or proportionate means of correct any inaccuracies. They agreed with Warby that a single paragraph of the letter could have been correctly used to disprove People magazines’ allegations against Markle.

During the appeal hearing in November, ANL said Meghan wrote the letter knowing it could be disclosed. In her written testimony, Meghan denied that she thought it was likely her father would disclose the letter, but simply admitted it was a possibility.

ANL argued that there was new evidence in a witness statement, texts and emails from former Sussex communications chief Jason Knauf which showed that she sent him a draft of the letter, writing: Obviously everything I have written is understood to be subject to disclosure. So I was meticulous in choosing my words.

The appeals court also heard that Knauf provided information to the authors of Sussex’s biography Finding Freedom and that Meghan provided him with a list of background reminders of his life story ahead of his two-hour meeting. with them.

Knauf’s witness statement prompted the Duchess to apologize for unwittingly misleading the court as to whether he had provided information to the authors of the books. She did not remember the emails between her and Knauf, she said in a statement.

The appeals court took note of the Duchess’s apology and said it was, at best, a regrettable oversight on her part, but unrelated to the issues. He said he found the new evidence provided by the ANL to be of little help.

Upholding Warbys’ cautious decision on the summary judgment, the appeals judges said it was difficult to see what evidence could have been presented at trial that would have changed the situation.

Vos said: The judge correctly decided that while it might have been proportionate to publish a very small part of the letter for this purpose, it was not necessary to publish half of the contents of the letter as Associated Newspapers had done.

Meghans’ lawyers had argued that the letter was deeply personal and was obviously intended to be kept private.

Texts released by the court in November showed Meghan expressing her frustration with the royals, describing them as constantly berating Harry over the negative publicity surrounding her father ahead of their marriage. It was a catalyst for her to write the letter, to protect Harry from his family, she wrote to Knauf.

Emails also showed her that she wanted to counter stories of an alleged argument over the tiara she could wear to her wedding and denied reports of any argument that the Queen had chosen the tiara for her. .

ANL argued that Markle had the right to publish excerpts from the letter to counter the negative image of himself portrayed by five of Meghan’s friends in a US People magazine article.