Meghan Markle Will Receive Only $1 From Tabloid After Winning Court Case & Appeal
After being involved in a court case against Associated Newspapers Limited, which owns the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Mail and others — Meghan Markle will receive just £1 ($1.36) from the tabloid after they published a 2018 letter she sent to her father.
According to The Guardian, "the outlet will also pay an unspecified sum for the separate case of infringing Meghan’s copyright by publishing large parts of the letter."
Mark Stephens, a media lawyer, said he was surprised by how little compensation the 40-year-old is receiving. “Normally for that kind of invasion of privacy you would expect £75,000 to £125,000. It does show that the curation of her reputation was an area where she had effectively invaded her own privacy," he said.
In early 2021, the judge declared that by making the letter public, it infringed on her copyright. However, the tabloid appealed, saying that the former actress had help when writing the letter to her father, and therefore, it was owned by The Crown.
Ultimately, the court ruled in her favor.
"This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what's right," she stated. "While this win is precedent setting, what matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create."
Meghan continued, "From day one, I have treated this lawsuit as an important measure of right versus wrong. The defendant has treated it as a game with no rules. The longer they dragged it out, the more they could twist facts and manipulate the public (even during the appeal itself), making a straightforward case extraordinarily convoluted in order to generate more headlines and sell more newspapers — a model that rewards chaos above truth. In the nearly three years since this began, I have been patient in the face of deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks."
The judge ordered that the Mail on Sunday release an apology in their newspaper, which they finally did on December 26.
"The Duchess of Sussex wins her legal case for copyright infringement against Associated Newspapers for articles published in The Mail on Sunday and posted on Mail Online," the front page read.
On page three, the statement continued: "Following a hearing on 19-20 January, 2021, and a further hearing on 5 May, 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 on Mail Online. Financial remedies have been agreed."
