LONDON (UK) – Lawyers for Meghan, Britain’s Duchess of Sussex, asked a London judge on Tuesday for a ruling in her favour in a privacy case against a tabloid newspaper without a trial, at the same time arguing the publication has no prospect of winning.
Meghan, 39, the wife of Queen Elizabeth’s grandson Prince Harry, is suing Associated Newspapers after its Mail on Sunday publishing extracts of a handwritten letter she had sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018.
She is pursuing aggravated damages, the publication of the letter was a misuse of private information and violated her copyright.
The paper has said the duchess was fine with other private matters to be made public if it matched her interests. It also said it was justified in publishing parts of the letter, as part of response to interviews her anonymous friends had given to the US magazine People, and due to her royal status.
At the start of a two-day hearing at London’s High Court, Meghan’s lawyer, Justin Rushbrooke, said judge Mark Warby should give a summary judgment favouring the former US actress as the paper’s arguments lacked “no reasonable grounds” of success and did not stand up to monitoring.
He said the Mail on Sunday had breached the code of conduct that British newspapers worked by, and the case raised “a disturbing question” about who controlled the contents of a private letter.
“Is it the writer of the letter or the editor of the Mail on Sunday?” Rushbrooke said.
“There can only be one answer to that question and the answer would be the same irrespective of whether the write was a duchess or any other citizen. And the answer is it is not the editor of the Mail on Sunday.”
He said the decision to publish the letter was an assault on “her private life, her family life and her correspondence”. In documents submitted to the court, her legal team described the paper’s defence as “a case of smoke and mirrors”.
In its written argument submitted to the court, the Mail on Sunday said Meghan had expected the letter’s contents to become public. It added that even if she had a privacy right, the paper’s freedom of expression rights overpowered the same.
“This case is wholly unsuitable for summary judgment. There is uncertainty as to a number of significant factual matters which can, and should, be investigated at trial when the court will have the full picture in terms of disclosure and evidence,” the paper’s legal team said.
The trial was likely to start last week but was prolonged until late 2021 because of a “confidential” reason.
