London:
The Mail On Sunday, portion of a UK newspaper group that lost a higher-profile privacy case brought by Meghan Markle, need to print a front-web page statement acknowledging her legal victory, a judge ruled on Friday.
High Court judge Mark Warby also ordered Associated Newspapers, which owns the Mail On Sunday and MailOnline web site, to publish a notice on web page 3 of the paper stating that it had “infringed her copyright”.
Warby in February upheld Meghan’s claim that Associated Newspapers had breached her privacy and copyright by publishing components of a 2018 letter she sent to her father Thomas Markle.
The letter to her estranged father was written a couple of months just after she married Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson, Prince Harry, and asked him to quit speaking to tabloids and producing false claims about her in interviews.
Warby has currently ordered Associated Newspapers to make an “interim payment” of GBP 450,000 ($627,000) to cover legal charges for the Duchess of Sussex, as Meghan is formally recognized.
On Friday he also formally refused its appeal bid, saying the newspaper group had “no real prospect” of achievement.
In his written ruling, the judge mentioned the front- and third-web page statements about Meghan’s prosperous copyright claim would have “genuine utility”.
He noted the Associated Newspapers titles involved had “devoted a very considerable amount of space to the infringing articles, which it continued to publish for over two years”.
“The wording sought is modest by comparison, and factual in nature,” Warby added of the notices he was ordering.
Meghan, 39, and 36-year-old Harry, who now live in the United States just after stepping down from frontline royal duties final year, have taken legal action against a quantity of publications, alleging invasion of privacy.
The couple have been in the headlines all week just after becoming embroiled in a transatlantic war of words with Buckingham Palace ahead of their blockbuster interview with Oprah Winfrey, set to air Sunday
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