Meghan Marklescored a major legal win on Thursday in herprivacy and copyright infringement caseagainst Associated Newspapers.
The Duchess of Sussex has won her claim against theMail on Sunday’s publishers after a British judge granted summary judgment in her favor over five articles published in February 2019 that reproduced parts of the handwritten letter she sent her father, Thomas Markle, following her royal wedding toPrince Harryin May 2018.
Meghan Markle.
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Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/POOL/AFP via Getty
In response to the Thursday ruling, Meghan said that she was “grateful to the courts for holding Associated Newspapers andThe Mail on Sundayto account.”
“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,” the Duchess of Sussex added in her written statement.
“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.
“The world needs reliable, fact-checked, high-quality news. What The Mail on Sunday and its partner publications do is the opposite. We all lose when misinformation sells more than truth, when moral exploitation sells more than decency, and when companies create their business model to profit from people’s pain.
“But for today, with this comprehensive win on both privacy and copyright, we have all won. We now know, and hope it creates legal precedent, that you cannot take somebody’s privacy and exploit it in a privacy case, as the defendant has blatantly done over the past two years.
“I share this victory with each of you—because we all deserve justice and truth, and we all deserve better.
“I particularly want to thank my husband, mom, and legal team, and especially Jenny Afia for her unrelenting support throughout this process.”
Meghan Markle.Shutterstock
During the summary judgment hearing in January, Meghan’s attorney, Justin Rushbrooke, argued that Meghan’s letter to her father was “intrinsically private, personal and sensitive” and that printing extracts of the letter constituted “a triple-barrelled invasion of her privacy rights.”
It was “a heartfelt plea from an anguished daughter to her father,” Rushbrooke added.
source: people.com
