Major Setback to Duchess’ of Sussex in Meghan Markle V. Associated Newspapers Dispute

The Royal Family of Britain has been target of various media publishers since ages now. Lately, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are the favourites of these gossip-news publishers, owing to their juicy upcoming controversies. As a matter of fact, the couple was the point of aim from the time the two officially announced their linkage, in the year 2016. This time, the headlines are about the update of Duchess’ lawsuit filed against the publisher of The Mail and Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, in October 2019.

The present lawsuit was filed  last fall with regards to five articles, two of them published in The Mail whereas three of them on MailOnline. The main article was titled as “Revealed: The letter showing true tragedy of Meghan’s rift with a father she says has ‘broken her heart into a million pieces”. As the name suggests, the article included parts of the leaked letter, Markle wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, in 2018, thereby, invoking an action of misuse of private information, infringement of copyright along with breach of the Data Protection Act of 2018 against the publishers, in addition to damages. On his wife’s decision to sue Associated Newspapers, Prince Harry commented, “my deepest fear is history repeating itself. I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditized to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”

It was alleged that, “The Duchess of Sussex's rights were violated; the legal boundaries around privacy were crossed. As part of this process, the extremes to which The Mail on Sunday used distortive, manipulative, and dishonest tactics to target the Duchess of Sussex have been put on full display.” On the other hand, the publisher vehemently denied the allegations and contended that the Duchess’ indirectly intended that her letter goes public on account of “immaculate handwriting.”

In the midst of COVID-19, the virtual ruling took place on May 1st in the High Court of London, wherein Justice Warby dismissed some of the claims instituted by the Duchess’ including the claim wherein the British tabloid acted “dishonestly” for publishing parts of daughter-father exchanged letter. Warby added, “These are not essential ingredients but irrelevant to whether there is a valid claim. Plaintiff’s arguments that motive and state of mind are among the circumstances to be considered are contrary to legal precedent.”

Despite of this massive setback, her London legal firm, Schillings denied any idea for futuristic appeal, rather emphasized upon the winning probability of the original ‘misuse of privacy’ claim filed by the Duchess’.

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