Meghan Markle Receives Public Apology After Winning Privacy Case Against British Tabloid

Meghan Markle has been granted a public apology from the publisher of the Mail on Sunday following a lengthy court battle with the British tabloid.

The publication printed a front-page mea culpa to Markle, 40, after multiple rulings that the Mail on Sunday and the MailOnline website breached the Duchess of Sussex's privacy in February 2019 by publishing parts of a five-page letter she wrote to her father. The note was written after her wedding to Prince Harry in May 2018, after Thomas Markle chose not to attend.

"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," Sunday's front page notice read, according to People.

"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 in Mail Online. Financial remedies have been agreed," the remainder of the public apology read on page 3.

On Feb. 11, Judge Mark Warby of the High Court in London ordered the Mail on Sunday to accompany the apology with a longer "notice" inside the newspaper under the headline, "The Duchess of Sussex," explicitly stating that the tabloid's publisher, Associated Newspapers, infringed Markle's copyright by publishing extracts of her handwritten letter.

The judge also ordered that the apology appear on the homepage of MailOnline for at least one week and include a hyperlink to the official judgment and summary.

After February's ruling, the publisher filed an appeal in an attempt to overturn the judge's decision that it had invaded Markle's privacy. However, on Dec. 2, the Court of Appeal in London chose to uphold Warby's decision.

"This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what's right," Markle said following the Court of Appeal's decision. "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."

In addition to the public apology, Markle is also set to receive financial damages from the publisher. It was ruled in March that Associated Newspapers is required to pay 90% of the duchess' estimated $1.88 million legal expenses for pursuing the 18-month-long case.

Royal commentator Angela Levin, author of "Harry: A Biography of a Prince," said she was "disappointed" with the case's outcome. According to her, the judges put more weight on how much of Markle's letter was published rather than on her alleged perjury.

"I'm very disappointed in the appeal court judges because they have put [more importance on] the number of words that you used from a letter ... than actually telling untruths about what's happened or a sort of lack of memory about it," Levin said during an interview with TalkRadio's Mike Graham.

In November, Markle apologized for misleading the courts over her recollection of the information given by her aides to the authors of "Finding Freedom," an unauthorized biography about her and her husband.

Markle admitted her former communications secretary Jason Knauf was told to brief authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand despite a public statement last summer that insisted she and Prince Harry "did not contribute" to the book. The duchess insisted the oversight was accidental.

Knauf also said in a witness statement that Markle had written the letter to her father knowing it might be leaked. Associated Newspapers insisted that Knauf's evidence "raises issues as to the duchess' credibility," the BBC reported.

But Markle denied she thought it likely that her father would leak the letter, saying she "merely recognized that this was a possibility."

Judges at the appeal ultimately ruled in Markle's favor, saying that her letter's contents were "personal, private and not matters of legitimate public interest."