Meghan Markle Breaks Silence After Winning Lawsuit Against Mail Online
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s battle against Mail Online is finally over, and it turned out in her favor. The ruling against the publishing company of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and Mail Online comes after the company’s appeal was dismissed. And now that it is all done, Meghan has something to say.
What was the lawsuit about?
The lawsuit began in 2019 when the Duchess sued Mail on Sunday after they published her private letter to her father, Thomas Markle, in which she asked him to stop speaking to the media.
During a hearing in November, the judge ruled that publishing the letter violated Meghan’s privacy.
“The Court of Appeal upheld the judge’s decision that the Duchess had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the letter and those contents were personal, private and not matters of legitimate public interest,” the ruling read, according to Newsweek.
Meghan won the initial lawsuit in February, but the publisher appealed the decision in April. Afterward, her private messages were given to the court by an aide. The messages revealed that Meghan had knowledge that her letter to her father might be leaked.
Meghan Markle’s statement
Meghan has kept mostly quiet about this lawsuit as it played out. But after the ruling, she released a statement.
“This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what’s right,” she wrote. “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.
“From day one, I have treated this lawsuit as an important measure of right versus wrong,” she continued. “The defendant has treated it as a game with no rules. The longer they dragged it out, the more they could twist facts and manipulate the public (even during the appeal itself), making a straightforward case extraordinarily convoluted in order to generate more headlines and sell more newspapers – a model that rewards chaos above truth.
“In the nearly three years since this began, I have been patient in the face of deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks,” she continued. “The courts have held the defendant to account, and my hope is that we all begin to do the same. Because as far removed as it may seem from your personal life, it’s not. Tomorrow it could be you. These harmful practices don’t happen once in a blue moon – they are a daily fail that divides us, and we all deserve better.”
What’s next for Meghan Markle?
Since leaving her role as a senior working royal, Meghan and her husband, Prince Harry, have been doing things their own way. The Duchess recently appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, in her first daytime talk show appearance since the royal exit. Without the added pressures of royal stress, it seems the Sussexes are allowing the public to get to know them a bit more intimately more and more as time goes on.
