Victory for Meghan Markle. As AFP reported on December 2, 2021, the Duchess of Sussex won her legal standoff against a British tabloid. The Associated Newspapers Limited group, which publishes the Mail on Sunday, had appealed a first court decision rendered earlier this year. As a reminder, the wife of Prince Harry had denounced the publication in 2018 of a personal letter addressed to her father Thomas Markle, with whom she is in the cold.
“This appeal will be rejected“Said the appeal judge on Thursday in rendering his decision.”The Court of Appeal upholds the judge’s decision that the Duchess could reasonably expect her privacy to be respected“, he added, stressing that the content of the letter was”personal, private and did not have a legitimate interest in the public interest“.
For her part, Meghan Markle immediately welcomed in a press release a “Victoire“, even according to her from”reshape“the tabloid industry.”What matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that pushes people to be cruel and takes advantage of the lies and the pain they create.added the mother of Archie and Lilibet (2 years and 5 months).
In this letter to her father published in 2018, shortly after her marriage to Prince Harry, the 40-year-old ex-American actress asked her father Thomas Markle, 77, to stop talking and lying in the media about their broken relationship. the Mail on Sunday had been ordered to report in the front page of his legal defeat, and his publisher to pay 450,000 pounds (530,000 euros) to the Duchess of Sussex for legal costs. But the mass-circulation tabloid argued in its appeal considered in November that she wrote the letter knowing that it might be disclosed…
A biography examined with a magnifying glass
In order to support his claims, the Mail on Sunday had put forward during the hearings on appeal the testimony of Jason Knauf, former secretary of communication of the couple, now installed in California. This former assistant claimed that the draft letter was written with “that she could flee“. In written testimony, Meghan Markle refuted this claim, saying she did not think her father would leak the letter she said portraying him in an unfavorable light. It was only a”possibility“, she estimated.
Jason Knauf also said he provided private information on behalf of Meghan and Harry to the authors of the unofficial biography of the royal couple, Finding Freedom (Harry and Meghan, free). According to him, the book project was “routinely discussed” and “directly with the Duchess, in person and by email“. Meghan Markle acknowledged this latest information and apologized for misleading the court by not having clarified it at first instance. She however argued that the information shared with the authors was”far from very detailed personal information” that the Mail on Sunday had published.