LONDON (Reuters) – A tabloid’s publication of a deeply personal letter written by Meghan, Britain’s Duchess of Sussex, to her father was a “plain breach” of her privacy, her lawyers told a court on Tuesday and asked the judge to issue a summary judgement against the paper without need for a trial.
Meghan, 39, the wife of Queen Elizabeth’s grandson Prince Harry, is suing publisher Associated Newspapers after its Mail on Sunday paper printed extracts of a handwritten letter she sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018.
At the start of two-days of remote hearings, Meghan’s lawyer, Justin Rushbrooke, asked a London High Court judge to rule in her favour without a potentially embarrassing trial. The Mail, he argued, had no prospect of winning what he called a “plain and serious” breach of her privacy and there was no viable defence.
Meghan says publishing some of the five-page letter, which ran to 1,250 words, was a misuse of private information and breached her copyright.
