Meghan Markle wins the lawsuit against the British press for her privacy

Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, has won this Thursday the latest phase of trial against a major UK press group to protect your privacy, following the publication by several newspapers of a personal letter who wrote to his father in 2018.

The London Court of Appeal has rejected an appeal filed by Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publisher of “Daily Mail“, “Mail on Sunday” and “MailOnLine“, in which he requested that two previous rulings be put to trial, which were resolved in a shorter process, as the judge considered that the evidence was clear in Markle’s favor.

Justices Geoffrey Vos, Victoria Sharp and David Bean have stated that “it is difficult to see what new evidence could have been provided in a trial that would have altered the situation“and have considered” correct “the previous conclusions of the Superior Court.

Unprecedented triumph

In a statement, the Duchess has celebrated the triumph, in a unprecedented process for the British monarchy, which usually tries to avoid the courts.

“This is a victory not only for me, but for anyone who has been afraid to stand up for the right thing,” said Markle, who believes that the precedent will serve to combat tabloid culture British, conditioned “to be cruel and take advantage of the lies and pain” she spreads. “From day one I have treated this lawsuit as an important measure of what’s right and what’s wrong. But they have treated it like a game without rules“Markle added in the statement, where he accuses the opposing side of trying to twist and manipulate the process to generate more headlines.

The letter to his father

In two previous opinions, in February and May, the Superior concluded that the newspapers had violated the privacy of the duchess by publishing, in 2019, excerpts from the letter that he addressed to his father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018.

Markle, who now lives in the United States with her husband, the prince henry, and his two sons, sued ANL for misuse of private information, violation of “copyright” (copyright) and violation of data protection law.

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Associated Newspapers Limited argued during the process that the text – reproduced by its headlines, the most widely read in the country, in five articles in February 2019 – was actually part of a duchess image strategy, and that it had also been written by an assistant of his, so the rights belonged to the monarchy.

The judge, Mark Warby, already said in February that, far from being in the general interest, the publication of the letter was “manifestly excessive and, therefore, illegal”, because it was “a personal and private letter“, which addressed aspects of the bad relationship between the father and his daughter, who felt” distressed “by the behavior of his father.