Meghan says Mail on Sunday privacy ruling is 'comprehensive win' on her privacy
The Duchess of Sussex has said her legal victory against the Mail on Sunday was a “comprehensive win” on her privacy.
Meghan won her High Court privacy claim against the paper over the publication of a “personal and private” handwritten letter to her father Thomas Markle.
Following the ruling, the 39-year-old said it showed "you cannot take somebody’s privacy and exploit it in a privacy case".
Giving his ruling on Thursday, Mr Justice Warby ruled in Meghan's favour after she claimed the publisher of the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline misused private information.
The judge said Meghan would have had a "reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private".
Justice Warby said that “the only tenable justification for any such interference was to correct some inaccuracies about the letter”, contained in an article in People magazine which featured an interview with five friends of Meghan.
But Mr Justice Warby added: “The inescapable conclusion is that, save to the very limited extent I have identified, the disclosures made were not a necessary or proportionate means of serving that purpose.
“For the most part they did not serve that purpose at all. Taken as a whole the disclosures were manifestly excessive and hence unlawful.”
The ruling also found the publication of the letter to Thomas Markle infringed the duchess’ copyright.
The Mail on Sunday’s articles “copied a large and important proportion of the work’s original literary content”, the judge ruled.
But Mr Justice Warby said issues of whether Meghan was “the sole author” – or whether Jason Knauf, formerly communications secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, was a “co-author” – should be determined at a trial.