Meghan Markle could become 'bigger than Diana' says expert

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Following her triumph at the High Court and the Court of Appeal, Meghan is to receive from the Mail on Sunday a nominal sum of £1 in damages for the invasion of her privacy. This amount was shown in court documents.

These documents also formally confirmed the Mail on Sunday and its sister publication MailOnline have accepted defeat and won’t seek to overturn the High Court judge’s ruling with a Supreme Court appeal – despite their publisher Associated Newspapers Limited saying last month it was considering this option.

On top of the nominal sum to be paid for the invasion of Meghan’s privacy, the Mail on Sunday will also pay an unspecified sum for infringing the Duchess of Sussex’s copyright by publishing large parts of the letter she sent in August 2018 to Thomas Markle Snr.

Finally, the Mail on Sunday faces having to cover a substantial part of Meghan’s legal costs.

A spokesperson for Meghan told the Guardian the court victories demonstrated the strength of both claims and the financial remedies would be based on Meghan’s right to an account of the newspaper’s profits following her win. 

They also described the payment as substantial and said it would be donated to charity.

The court settlement didn’t stop at the payments.

The Mail outlets have been barred from disclosing the names of the five friends of Meghan who spoke anonymously to People magazine in early 2019 about, among other issues, the Duchess’ relationship with her father.

The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline were also ordered to publish on their front page and homepage a statement announcing they lost the legal case. 

The court dictated the wording, font and size of these public declarations.

The outlets carried out this requirement on Boxing Day.

Meghan’s legal battle against Associated Newspapers officially began in 2019, when Prince Harry announced in a strongly-worded statement, released as their South Africa tour was ending, that his wife was suing the British publisher.

Meghan claimed Associated Newspapers had misused her private information, infringed her copyright and breached the Data Protection Act with the publication in February 2019 of five articles across the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline which included extracts from a handwritten private letter she had previously penned to her father. 

The Duchess won her privacy case in February 2021, when High Court judge Lord Justice Warby ruled in her favour and awarded her a summary judgement.

This meant the legal case ended without a full trial, as the judge said the publication of these extracts had been “manifestly excessive and hence unlawful”.

Giving his ruling, the judge said the majority of the content published was about Meghan’s “behaviour, her feelings of anguish about her father’s behaviour, as she saw it, and the resulting rift between them”.

He added: “These are inherently private and personal matters.” 

Associated Newspapers challenged this ruling and, during a three-day hearing at the Court of Appeal, it argued the case should go to a trial.

But judges Sir Geoffrey Vos, Dame Victoria Sharp and Lord Justice Bean dismissed the publisher’s appeal in their ruling in December.

Reading a summary of their decision, Sir Geoffrey said: “It was hard to see what evidence could have been adduced at trial that would have altered the situation.

“The judge had been in as good a position as any trial judge to look at the article in People magazine, the letter and The Mail On Sunday articles to decide if publication of the contents of the letter was appropriate to rebut the allegations against Mr Markle. 

“The judge had correctly decided that, whilst it might have been proportionate to publish a very small part of the letter for that purpose, it was not necessary to publish half the contents of the letter as ANL had done.”

During the hearing in November, the judges were told 585 out of the letter’s 1,250 words had been republished in the five articles in question.

Following the Court of Appeal’s judgement, Meghan celebrated her victory saying it was “precedent setting” and called for a reshaping of the tabloid industry.  

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