Meghan’s legal team said the letter to her father in August 2018, which was later partially published in Mail on Sunday, was “obviously private.” The Duchess of Sussex’s lawyers also revealed Meghan’s “personal anguish and anguish” at the time of writing the letter.
In court documents describing Meghan’s claim against Associated Newspapers, her lawyers said: “The letter was obviously a private correspondence written by the claimant to his father.
“In addition, it contained the applicant’s deepest and most private thoughts and feelings about her relationship with her father and was detailed by her at a time of great distress and personal distress.
“The claimant intended the detailed contents of the letter to be private, and he certainly did not expect that they would be published worldwide by a national newspaper, and without any warning.”
This comes before another preliminary hearing that will take place later today.
Justice Warby will listen to two issues: one regarding costs and another application to protect the anonymity of Meghan’s five friends who spoke anonymously to People Magazine about the difficult relationship with her father.
This article was published in February last year, shortly before Mail On Sunday published excerpts from the letter Meghan had sent Markle six months earlier.
These five friends of the Duchess were addresses such as A, B, C, D, and E in the People magazine article.
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In a heavily redacted eyewitness statement filed earlier this month as part of the request, the duchess said: “Associated newspapers, the owner of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, threaten to publish the names of five women, five citizens. Privates, who made the decision on their own to speak anonymously to a U.S. media outlet more than a year ago, to defend myself against the bullying behavior of Britain’s tabloid media.
“These five women are not being judged, and neither am I.
“The editor of Mail on Sunday is the one on trial.
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“It is this publisher who acted illegally and is trying to evade responsibility; create a circus and distract him from the point of this case: that the Mail on Sunday illegally published my private letter.
“Each of these women is a private citizen, a young mother, and each has a basic right to privacy.”
A Mail On Sunday spokesperson said the post “had absolutely no intention” of revealing these names.
They continued: “To make things clear, The Mail on Sunday had no intention of publishing the identities of the five friends this weekend.
“But their evidence is at the heart of the case and we see no reason why their identities should be kept secret.”
“That is why we told the duchess’s lawyers last week that the issue of their confidentiality should be properly considered by the court.”
The People magazine article has been featured in the legal case, as Associated Newspapers claims that these five friends brought the Duchess’s private letter into the public domain when it was first mentioned in her interview in the American magazine.
As announced in a statement issued on October 1 by Prince Harry, Meghan is suing Associated Newspapers, publisher of MailOnline, Mail On Sunday, and Daily Mail, for copyright infringement, privacy infringement, and breach of copyright. Data Protection. Act.
Associated Newspapers flatly denies all the allegations.
