Meghan Markle wins bid to get statement about High Court victory printed on Mail On Sunday front page

The Mail On Sunday must publish a front-page statement about the Duchess of Sussex’s victory in her copyright claim against the newspaper over its publication of a letter to her estranged father, the High Court has ruled.

Meghan emerged victorious from a legal battle with the newspaper’s publisher Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) after her private letter to Thomas Markle featured in five news articles.

In a judgment handed down today, Lord Justice Warby said the newspaper should published a front page statement and an article should also appear for a week on MailOnline.

The notice would read: “Following a hearing on 10-20 January 2021, the Court has given judgment for The Duchess of Sussex on her claim for copyright infringement. The Court found that Associated Newspapers infringed her copyright by publishing extracts of her handwritten letter to her father in The Mail on Sunday and in Mail Online.

“There will be a trial of the remedies to which the Duchess is entitled, at which the court will decide whether the Duchess is the exclusive owner of copyright in all parts of the letter, or whether any other person owns a share.”

The MailOnline article will also feature the line: “The full judgment and the Court’s summary of it can be found here”, with a link to the online ruling.

“In my judgment these are measured incursions into the defendant’s freedom to decide what it publishes and does not publish, that are justified in pursuit of the legitimate aim I have identified, and proportionate to that aim”, concluded the judge.

“They will involve little if any additional expense, and certainly nothing approaching the scale of the expense that has been lavished on this litigation.”

Meghan was granted summary judgment - winning the majority of her case outright - after suing the publisher over publication of extracts of the private letter in 2019.

The judge found ANL had no reasonable defence to the privacy claim, and also awarded the Duchess victory in the breach of copyright claim apart from a very minor detail.

Deciding the front page statement was warranted, he noted that his judgment had been read on the official Judicial website 4,652 times and the tweet promoting it had been retweeted 121 times.

“It goes without saying that these figures pale by comparison with the readership of the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, and other media outlets that covered the story”, he said.

And he said the argument for a prominent statement of the outcome of the case had been strengthened by the way the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline had covered the ruling.

“The coverage could be read as suggesting that judgment in the claimant’s favour on privacy “WITHOUT a trial” is a startling and unusual one, and that the entire question of whether the claimant owned any copyright was to go to trial”, he said.

“There was a sentence in the article inviting readers to “read the [Summary Judgment] in full here”, with a link to the full text on the judiciary website. But this was far from conspicuous.

“It came at the very end of a long article, running to over 1,100 words, which contained reporting and criticism of the judgment, and reports on other features of the litigation.

“Until guided to it by Counsel, I had failed to spot the link when reading the MailOnline article. There was no link to the two-page summary of the Summary Judgment that I prepared, which was also on the judiciary website, the purpose of which was to help readers follow its structure and easily identify and understand my conclusions.”

He added: “I also place some weight on the fact that the defendant saw fit to continue the publication on MailOnline of articles that I had held to be a misuse of private information and an infringement of copyright, making them accessible (so it appears) to anyone from anywhere in the world.

“This cannot be accidental, or an oversight. In the absence of any explanation, I am tempted to infer that it is a form of defiance. But I do not need to make a finding.

“Whatever the reasons, this conduct could easily suggest - certainly to the casual reader - that the Court has taken a different view from the one I expressed in the judgment.”

At a hearing earlier this week, ANL was ordered to pay £450,000 in upfront costs to the duchess, with the possibility of more to follow.

The newspaper publisher was not ordered to hand over the copies of the private letter it holds, and has said it is considering an appeal to the judgment.

Lord Justice Warby refused permission to appeal at the hearing this week, though ANL has the option of going directly to the Court of Appeal.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in