Podcast 7 - Meghan Markle's court case against Associated Newspapers Ltd

In this podcast I am going to try and unpack Meghan’s court case in the UK High Court against Associated Newspapers Ltd and give an update on recent events in the case.

October 1st, 2019 was the last day of Meghan and Harry’s successful tour of southern Africa. Harry released a statement announcing a pending legal case in general terms. Harry accused certain elements in the UK media of bullying, by knowingly printing false and malicious articles aware that Harry and Meghan, due to Royal Protocol, were unable to take steps to correct the stories.

Later that day it was announced that Meghan had filed a claim against Associated Newspapers over the misuse of private information, infringement of copyright, and breach of the UK Data Protection Act 2018. 

Over time details of what the case was about came out. In a nutshell, Meghan was suing the newspaper for articles published in the Mail on Sunday in February 2019 that included parts of a handwritten letter from Meghan to her father that she wrote in August 2018, in which she detailed her private feelings and hurt over Mr. Markle’s behaviour at the time of her wedding.

The newspaper's main defences to the action appear to be freedom of expression, a denial that the letter had any copyright attached to it, and an allegation the letter was not actually private and confidential.

The newspaper are also saying that they only published parts of the letter after Meghan’s friends gave an interview to People Magazine printed in February 2019, making reference to the letter. Meghan claims she did not authorise her friends to give this interview and only learned of it afterwards.  The newspaper argues that Mr. Markle felt he was portrayed badly in the People Magazine article and he wanted the letter published to correct the false impression that had been given about him. The newspaper say they printed it at the behest of Mr. Markle to help him clear his name. 

In May of this year, in a pre-trial application, Associated Newspapers successfully argued that certain aspects of Meghan’s court documents be struck out. These were allegations that the Newspaper had acted dishonestly and with malice. The judge agreed and Meghan had costs ordered against her. 

This past week, another pre-trial application was decided by the case management judge, Justice Warby. Meghan was forced to bring a motion on short notice, after the newspaper threatened to release the names of her 5 friends who gave the February 2019 interview to People Magazine. These friends had done so on condition of staying anonymous. 

The decision the judge had to make this time was whether the 'open court principle' that allows information about court cases to freely available for all to read, to enable public scrutiny of the workings of the law, outweighed the desire for Meghan to keep the names of her five friends confidential. 

Both sides of the case came in for criticism by the judge for playing out parts of their case through media sources.

The judge noted, somewhat ironically, that it usually the newspapers who are trying to protect their sources and in this case the roles were reversed. In the end the judge decided that the newspaper had not provided any convincing arguments why revealing the name of Meghan's five friends 'for the time being' would have any real value in advancing the administration of justice. 

One person who has suddenly gone very quiet since the court case started is Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle Snr. Why is this?

Anyone interested to read the judgments released so far in the court case can downl

Show written and produced by Jeanette Songolo.

Please keep listening for future podcasts on all things Meghan, Harry, Archie and Lili and in the meantime watch out for other posts on all things Sussex on my blog at https://www.kindthoughtsformeghanmarkle.com/