The Mail On Sunday has been ordered by the High Court to publish a front-page statement about the Duchess of Sussex’s legal victory against the newspaper last month.
Meghan won her copyright claim over its publication of a letter she sent to her estranged father, with a judge ruling that she “had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private”.
Friday’s ruling said the newspaper must print a further notice about the outcome of the case in its inside pages.
Lord Justice Warby agreed that Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) “misused her (Meghan’s) private information and infringed her copyright”.
The duchess, 39, sued ANL over a series of articles which reproduced parts of a “heartfelt” letter to Mr Markle, 76, in August 2018.
She claimed the five articles published in February 2019 involved not only a misuse of her private information and breached her copyright but also breached the Data Protection Act.
Last month, Meghan was granted summary judgment in relation to her privacy claim, meaning she won that part of the case without having to go to trial, as well as most of her copyright claim.
At a remote hearing this week, ANL’s lawyers applied for permission to appeal against that ruling on 10 grounds.
But Lord Justice Warby refused permission to appeal, saying it had “no real prospect” of success.
In the ruling last month, the judge said publication of Meghan’s letter to her father was “manifestly excessive and hence unlawful”.
He 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.”
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