Duchess wins privacy court case

THE Duchess of Sussex has won her High Court privacy claim against the Mail On Sunday over the publication of a “personal and private” letter to her estranged father.

Meghan, 39, sued Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publisher of The Mail On Sunday and MailOnline, over a series of articles which reproduced parts of the letter sent to Thomas Markle in August 2018.

She called the ruling a

“comprehensive win”. She is seeking damages for alleged misuse of private information, copyright infringement and breach of the Data Protection Act over five articles published in February 2019, which included extracts from the

“private and confidential” letter to her father. Her lawyers had argued that ANL has “no prospect” of defending her claim for misuse of private information and breach of copyright. They asked the High Court to grant “summary judgment” in relation to those claims, a legal step which would see those parts of the case resolved without a trial.

Mr Justice Warby ruled yesterday that the publication of Meghan’s letter to her father was “manifestly excessive and hence unlawful”. He said: “It was, in short, a personal and private letter. The majority of what was published was about the claimant’s own behaviour, her feelings of anguish about her father’s behaviour - as she saw it - and the resulting rift between them.” A further hearing in March will decide “the next steps” regarding the

Duchess’s copyright claim.