Meghan Markle has lost the first round in her legal fight against online Newspaper, Daily Mail Group.
Earlier on, Meghan Markle had dragged the Mail on Sunday and Mail Online to court over alleged breach of privacy after they published excerpts from private correspondence between her and her estranged father, Thomas Markle.
Meghan Markle was outraged when the Mail on Sunday published an article in February 2019 under the headline: “Revealed, the letter showing true tragedy of Meghan’s rift with a father she says has ‘broken her heart into a million pieces’.”
She is seeking compensation under Article 82 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and section 168 of the Data Protection Act 2018.
As part of the lawsuit she has launched against Associated Newspapers, she is demanding all copies of the letter she wrote to her father.
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However, on Friday, 1 May, Mr Justice Warby ruled against the Duchess who had claimed the newspaper had acted dishonestly.
The judge ruled it was “irrelevant” and added: “Such issues are assessed objectively. The claimant’s arguments that motive and state of mind are among the circumstances to be considered are contrary to Campbell v MGN Ltd (the legal precedent involving supermodel Naomi Campbell).”
He added: “As a matter of principle, other articles or other conduct can in principle be relied on as ‘rubbing salt in the wound’, but that cannot be and is not said of these nine articles. The claimant’s case is that the articles sued upon are a distressing instance of a pattern of misconduct which also includes the nine other articles that have been sued upon.”