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'I Am Grateful': Meghan Markle Shares Powerful Message After She Wins Court Battle Against U.K. Tabloid

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Source: MEGA

Feb. 11 2021, Updated 4:52 p.m. ET

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A royal victory! Meghan Markle thanked her husband, Prince Harry, and mother after winning her appeal for a summary judgement against a British tabloid that published excerpts of a private letter she had written to her father, Thomas

This is a major win for the Duchess of Sussex, as she may have had to face a full trial in London’s High Court, as well as come face to face with her estranged father and be forced to take the stand. 

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In a statement, Markle said: “After two long years of pursuing litigation, I am grateful to the courts for holding Associated Newspapers and The Mail on Sunday to account for their illegal and dehumanizing practices. These tactics (and those of their sister publications MailOnline and the Daily Mail) are not new; in fact, they’ve been going on for far too long without consequence. For these outlets, it’s a game. For me and so many others, it’s real life, real relationships, and very real sadness. The damage they have done and continue to do runs deep.” 

She added, “The world needs reliable, fact-checked, high-quality news. What The Mail on Sunday and its partner publications do is the opposite. We all lose when misinformation sells more than truth, when moral exploitation sells more than decency, and when companies create their business model to profit from people’s pain. But for today, with this comprehensive win on both privacy and copyright, we have all won. We now know, and hope it creates legal precedent, that you cannot take somebody’s privacy and exploit it in a privacy case, as the defendant has blatantly done over the past two years.

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“I share this victory with each of you — because we all deserve justice and truth, and we all deserve better,” she concluded. “I particularly want to thank my husband, mom, and legal team, and especially Jenny Afia for her unrelenting support throughout this process.” 

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Markle, 39, took legal action against Associated Newspapers Limited — which publishes the Daily Mail and MailOnline — for invasion of privacy, infringement of data protection rights and copyright infringement after they published the letter in August 2018. 

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As OK! previously reported, Judge Mark Warby ruled that there was no need for a full trial in "there is no prospect that a different judgment would be reached," adding that Markle "had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private," and clarified that the publishing of the excerpts "interfered with that reasonable expectation."

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"It was, in short, a personal and private letter. The majority of what was published was about the claimant's own behavior, her feelings of anguish about her father's behavior — as she saw it — and the resulting rift between them. These are inherently private and personal matters," he continued, adding that, "taken as a whole the disclosures were manifestly excessive and hence unlawful." 

Warby added there would be another hearing in March to decide on "next steps" in the case.

ET Canada was the first to report on Markle's statement.

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