The Duchess of Sussex has won a High Court privacy battle against the Mail On Sunday over the publication of a private letter to her father.
The copyright allegations levelled by Meghan will still head to trial as the Judge said the legal issues surrounding this element remain unclear.
Meghan is suing Associated Papers over five articles which were published in February 2019. These stories, published in the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, reproduced parts of a letter she wrote to Thomas Markle shortly after her wedding to Prince Harry in 2018.
The publisher argued that the had no reasonable expectation of privacy and that she anticipated publication of the letter.
Their defence was, however, not accepted by Mr Justice Warby.
A spokesperson for the newspaper said: “We are very surprised by today’s summary judgment and disappointed at being denied the chance to have all the evidence heard and tested in open court at a full trial.”
In his judgment, Mr Justice Warby said: “It was, in short, a personal and private letter. The majority of what was published was about the claimant’s own behaviour, her feelings of anguish about her father’s behaviour – as she saw it – and the resulting rift between them.
“These are inherently private and personal matters.
“The claimant had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private. The Mail articles interfered with that reasonable expectation.
“There is no prospect that a different judgment would be reached after a trial.”
