“This is a victory for me, but also for anyone who has been afraid to stand up for what is fair,” the American reacted in a statement.
The publisher of Mail on Sunday, the group Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), challenged before the Royal Courts of Justice in London a conviction of February for the publication of a letter from Meghan, “manifestly excessive and, consequently, illegal”.
“The appeal will be rejected,” the judge told the Mail on Sunday editor on Thursday. The court “upholds the decision that the Duchess could reasonably expect her private life to be respected,” the court added.
Following the court’s decision, Markle said that “the most important thing is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that pushes people to be cruel and profits from the lies and pain they create.”
The 40-year-old former actress took legal action against ANL, editor of the Daily Mail newspaper, its Sunday version Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online website, for publishing excerpts from a letter sent to the controversial Thomas Markle, 76 years old.
The letter was written in August 2018, a few months after Meghan married Prince Harry, the grandson of Elizabeth II. In it, he asked his father to stop making false statements to the press.
The Mail on Sunday he was sentenced to report his legal defeat on the front page and his publisher had to pay £ 450,000 (about $ 599,467) to the Duchess of Sussex.
But at the beginning of the appeal hearing, the publisher claimed that the letter in question had been written in the knowledge that it could be published. The Mail on Sunday wants to show that Markle sought to influence public opinion.
To support their arguments, the Mail on Sunday featured the testimony of Jason Knauf, the couple’s former communications secretary, now based in California.
The former aide said the draft letter had been written with “the possibility of leaking in mind.”
However, Meghan refuted this claim, saying that she did not believe her father was going to leak the letter. It was just a “possibility,” he said.
Meghan’s lawyers denied that she intended to make it public at any time, or that she collaborated with the authors of the biography “Finding Freedom”, as Knauf claimed.
The book tells of the couple’s estrangement from the British monarchy.
However, Meghan admitted to having participated in the writing of the book – which she and her husband had always denied until then – and apologized for having misled the court by not specifying it in the first instance.
Meghan and Harry left their royal duties in March of last year. They have taken a series of legal actions against the media alleging invasion of privacy
Source From: Ambito
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