MEGHAN Don’t unmask my friends
Duchess’s dramatic plea to keep star court witnesses secret
PUBLICLY naming five of the Duchess of Sussex’s best friends would be an ‘unacceptable price to pay’ for Meghan in pursuing her case against a newspaper, the High Court heard yesterday.
She is suing The Mail on Sunday for publishing extracts from a letter she sent to her estranged father Thomas Markle.
Yesterday she launched a legal bid to keep secret the identities of five close friends who spoke anonymously about her to US magazine People. Justin Rushbrooke QC, for Meghan, said her five friends were entitled to ‘a very high level of supercharged right of confidentiality’. He said forcing her to disclose their identities to the public ‘would be to exact an unacceptably high price for pursuing her claim’ against the newspaper.
To keep a lid on their names, they were referred to as friends A to E – apart from when the duchess’s own lawyer accidentally blurted out one of the names while arguing they should be kept secret. The judge ordered that journalists in court must not report the woman’s name.
Meghan claims she had no idea the five friends were giving an interview about her to People, in which the letter was mentioned.
Her ‘inner circle’ could be hauled to the High Court to testify, with each friend asked on oath if it was true Meghan did not know they were going to speak to the magazine. She has strenuously denied knowing.
Meghan insists her handwritten letter to Mr Markle was private, and the newspaper should not have published extracts from it.
But the newspaper says Mr Markle revealed the letter only after Meghan’s friends gave their interviews to People – and only because he had wanted to correct the false impression the article had given about his letter.
No date has been set for a trial. In yesterday’s preliminary hearing, Mr Rushbrooke accused The Mail on Sunday – the Daily Mail’s sister paper – of a ‘flagrant and unjustified intrusion into her private and family life’.
The duchess, 38, has previously said each of the women was a ‘private citizen, young mother’ and that ‘they are not on trial, and nor am I’. She provided their names on a
‘confidential schedule’ lodged with the court.
Mr Rushbrooke said: ‘The friends are not parties to this action, but unwilling participants.’
He said they gave their interviews to People magazine ‘on condition of anonymity... and they fear for the consequences by way of inevitable intrusion into their private and family lives if it is not protected. They are entitled to the court’s protection.’
Antony White QC, for the newspaper, argued that the principle of open justice required hearings to be in public, unless there was ‘clear and cogent evidence’ that imposing secrecy was strictly necessary. Mr White said: ‘There is no proper evidential basis (for the application).’
He said the friends were important potential witnesses, but four of the five had not provided the court with any evidence.
The fifth – an American woman known as Friend B – had written a statement describing why she wishes to remain anonymous which Mr White described as ‘misleading’ and ‘unsatisfactory’.
He added: ‘The proper administration of justice does not include protecting people from reputational harm.’
Meghan’s five best friends are all young mothers, she has said. People magazine gave her ‘inner circle’ these tags: Longtime friend;
Former co-star; Friend from LA; One-time colleague; Close confidante. Mr Justice Warby said he would give his decision on whether the five friends can remain anonymous at a later date.
The Sussexes have said they will fund the legal proceedings privately. Neither Meghan nor Harry attended the hearing.