London : A British court dismissed an appeal on Thursday by a newspaper publisher seeking to overturn a previous ruling that found the Mail on Sunday had breached the Duchess of Sussex’s privacy by publishing portions of a letter she sent to her father. Britain’s Court of Appeal upheld the earlier High Court decision, handed down in February, that the Mail had in fact breached Meghan’s privacy in a way that was “manifestly excessive and hence unlawful.”
“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 said in the statement, adding that she had always “treated this lawsuit as an important measure of right versus wrong.”
She accused the Mail on Sunday‘s publisher, Associated Newspapers Ltd., however, of treating it like “a game with no rules.”
The duchess said the newspaper group had twisted facts in a bid to manipulate public opinion, “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.”
If the publishers had been successful with their appeal, CBS News’ Williams said there could have been more embarrassment as the matter would likely have gone to trial — with members of the royal family potentially asked to testify. It was a high-risk strategy on the part of the duchess, Williams said, but she emerged victorious, at least in a legal sense
