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MEGHAN Markle lost the first stage of her privacy case when a Superior Court judge ruled that a number of her arguments were “shameful”, “vague” and “irrelevant”.
Tonight’s lawyers described his defeat as “humiliation” and “complete disaster.”
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Judge Warby dismissed the allegations that Associated Newspapers, owners of the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, acted dishonestly and maliciously by publishing a letter he wrote to his father.
Her core claim, that the letter’s publication violated privacy, copyright and data protection laws, must be seen face to face with her father Thomas later in the year.
In a written ruling, the judge said the allegations he was dismissing were “vague and lacking in detail.”
He added: “The declared case is ‘shameful’ in the old sense that it places the accused in an impossible position, so he cannot say which case he has to solve.”
‘COMPLETE DISASTER’
Outside of court, Mark Stephens, a partner at London law firm Howard Kennedy, said: “For Meghan, this trial is like a train crashing into a gasoline tanker at a level crossing.
“It is a complete disaster. She has been humiliated today. Every complaint from Associated Newspapers has been fully and fully claimed by the judge. “
He added: ‘I would advise you to get settled and leave. If he goes to trial, Meghan and her father Thomas’ evidence of the letter and its crack will be examined under oath.
“If she is going to be humiliated in person, there will be no worse outcome for her.”
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Gavin Millar QC of Matrix Chambers said: “The case brought before the court was exaggerated.
“This is a simple claim on one letter and five articles, and it cannot be turned into a mini-public investigation into the Associated reports on them.”
For Meghan, this trial is like a train crashing into an oil tanker at a level crossing.
Mark Stephens
But Schillings, whose famous lawyer David Sherborne represents Meghan, insisted: “Today’s ruling makes it very clear that the core elements of this case do not change and will continue to move forward.”
“The duchess’s rights were violated: legal limits on privacy were crossed.”
The ruling came a week after Meghan, 38, and her husband Harry, 35, watched the opening arguments via video link from their new base in Los Angeles.
Meghan has not spoken to Thomas, 75, since before her wedding in May 2018. She did not attend after suffering a heart attack.
In the full hearing, the attorneys will discuss whether Meghan had a reasonable expectation that her handwritten letter would be private despite her friends revealing its content.
She said she did not know that the five friends had spoken to the American magazine People, and that they could be questioned about this under oath.
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Thomas, who lives in Mexico, said he felt “reviled” by the magazine article and so he passed the letter on to the press.
Associated newspapers had offered not to charge her costs for the pre-trial hearing if Meghan withdrew her opposition to reject the claims, but she declined.
At the end of the case, the owners of the newspapers are now expected to ask her and Harry to pay their £ 50,000 legal fee in addition to the couple’s £ 60,000 bill. The entire audience will send the costs even higher.
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