On Sunday, December 26, the Mail on Sunday printed an apology to Meghan Markle. They were required to issue the statement after losing a lengthy court battle to Markle for breaching the Duchess of Sussex’s privacy. In 2019, the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline websites published parts of a 5-page letter she wrote to her father, Thomas Markle, which she had sent in advance of her marriage to Prince Harry in May of 2018. Her father chose not attend.
Under the headline “The Duchess of Sussex” the publication wrote, “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.”
It continued, “The Court found that Associated Newspapers infringed her copyright by publishing extracts of her handwritten letter to her father in The Mail on Sunday and in Mail Online.”
They were also ordered to link to the summaries of the official judgment and added that “financial remedies have been agreed.”
The sites are required to leave the message up on the homepage of MailOnline for a full week. Markle was awarded victory in the case on December 2 by the Court of Appeal in London. The case did not proceed to trial. The High Court judge wrote in the summary that the duchess “had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the Letter would remain private.”
In a statement, Markle shared, “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.”
She continued, “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. 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.”
Markle added, “The courts have held the defendant to account, and my hope is that we all begin to do the same. Because as far removed as it may seem from your personal life, it’s not. Tomorrow it could be you. These harmful practices don’t happen once in a blue moon—they are a daily fail that divide us, and we all deserve better.”
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