Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, won the last phase of her litigation against a leading UK press group to protect her privacy on Thursday, following the publication by various newspapers of a personal letter she wrote to her father in 2018.
The London Court of Appeal today rejected an appeal by Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publisher of "Daily mail", "Mail on Sunday" and "MailOnLine", which requested that two previous rulings be submitted to trial, which were resolved summarily in a shorter process, as the judge considered that the evidence was clear in Markle’s favor.
Justices Geoffrey Vos, Victoria Sharp and David Bean said Thursday that "it is difficult to see what new evidence could have been provided in a trial that would have altered the situation" and they considered "correct" the previous findings of the Superior Court.
In a statement, the 40-year-old Duchess celebrated her triumph, in an unprecedented process for the British monarchy, which often tries to avoid court.
"This is a victory not only for me, but for anyone who has been afraid to stand up for the right thing."said Markle, who believes that the precedent will serve to combat the culture of the British tabloid press, conditioned "to be cruel and take advantage of lies and pain" that spreads.
"From day one, I have treated this lawsuit as an important measure of what is right and what is wrong. But they have treated it like a game with no rules"Markle notes in the note, where he accuses the opposing side of trying to twist and manipulate the process to generate more headlines.
"In the three years since this started, I have been patient in the face of deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks. Today, the courts have ruled in my favor, once again, cementing that the ‘Mail on Sunday’, owned by Lord Jonathan Rothermere, has broken the law"he declared.
In two summary opinions in February and May, the Superior concluded that the newspapers had violated the privacy of the Duchess by publishing excerpts from the letter she addressed to her father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018, and that the letter was written for her and not for an assistant, so she is the injured party, as the owner of the intellectual right.
Markle, who now lives in the United States with her husband, Prince Henry, and their two sons, sued ANL for misuse of private information, violation of the "copyright" (copyright) and infringement of data protection law.
Associated Newspapers Limited argued during the process that the text – reproduced by its headlines, the most widely read in the country, in five articles in February 2019 – was actually part of an image strategy of the Duchess, and that it had also been written by a his assistant, so the rights belonged to the monarchy.
Judge Mark Warby said in February that, far from being in the general interest, the publication of the letter was "manifestly excessive, and therefore illegal", since it was about "a personal and private letter", which addressed aspects of the bad relationship between the father and his daughter, who felt "distressed" by the behavior of his parent.
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