LONDON (UK) – Duchess of Sussex Meghan’s lawyers asked a London judge on Tuesday to rule in her favour in a privacy lawsuit against a tabloid sans trial. They argued that the publication has no chance of winning.
The 39-year-old wife of Prince Harry, the grandson of Queen Elizabeth, is suing the Associated Newspapers after its Mail on Sunday published extracts of a handwritten letter she had sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018.
Saying the publication of the letter was a breach of copyright and misuse of private information, Meghan is seeking aggravated damages.
The publication said Meghan was willing it make other private matters public if it suited her interests, adding that it was perfectly justified in publishing extracts of the letter in response to interviewers her friends had given to US magazine People and because of her royal status.
During the beginning of a two-day hearing at High Court, Meghan’s lawyer, Justin Rushbrooke, said judge Mark Warby should give a ruling favouring the former US actress as the newspaper’s arguments had “no reasonable grounds” of success.
The lawyer also said the Mail on Sunday had violated the code of conduct British newspapers worked by and the case raise 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.”
Meghan’s lawyer said the newspaper’s decision to publish the letter was an assault on “her private life, her family life and her correspondence”. Based on documents submitted to the court, the Duchess’ legal team described the defence of the paper as a “case of smoke and mirrors”.
