Meghan Markle has won a legal battle against the publishers of the British publication The Mail on Sunday.
People reports that as part of her victory, the tabloid had to issue a public apology, which was printed on the front page. Back in February 2019, The Mail printed excerpts of a five-page letter that she wrote to her father after marrying Prince Harry in May 2018. Markle subsequently filed a copyright infringement lawsuit, and a judge later ruled that The Mail and the MailOnline website had violated Markle’s privacy.
“Following a hearing on 19-20 January, 2021, and a further hearing on 5 May, 2021, the Court has given judgment for the Duchess of Sussex on her claim for copyright infringement. The Court found that Associated Newspapers infringed her copyright by publishing extracts of her handwritten letter to her father in The Mail on Sunday and on Mail Online. Financial remedies have been agreed,” the front page notice in Sunday’s edition of the paper read, in part.
The judge also required that the apology be published on MailOnline’s homepage and remain there for a week. Moreover, the newspaper group will pay her in damages, with a judge ruling that it will cover 90 percent of the $1.88M she spent in legal expenses over the course of 18 months.
Markle issued her own statement earlier this month, on Dec. 2. “This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what’s right.” She continued, “While this win is precedent-setting, what matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create.”
