Meghan Markle’s father, Thomas, said he believes his daughter has “expressly authorized” or at least “approved” an article. People magazine about him that was ‘a total lie’ and in which he was portrayed as ‘dishonest, exploitative, publicity-seeking, indifferent and cold-hearted’.
Thomas, whose bombshell testimony was contained in a testimony unsealed in the Supreme Court of London today, said a controversial letter his daughter wrote to him in August 2018, four months after he missed her wedding to Prince Harry due to a heart attack. . a “criticism” of him that he thought “marked the end of our relationship.”
Meghan is seeking a so-called ‘summary judgment’ in her high-profile privacy and copyright action against (ANL), triggered by the 2019 publication in the Mail on Sunday of parts of the letter she sent to her estranged father.
If successful, a short sentence in Meghan’s favor would end much of the case without a full trial. Buckingham Palace would like Meghan to find a way to avoid being the first senior royal in living memory to undergo a grueling and potentially embarrassing cross-examination of her personal life on the witness stand.
In the statement, released today in the Supreme Court, Thomas, who is the key witness for Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), states the publishers of the Mail on Sunday, said he felt he had been “maligned” in the article in People, in which five of Meghan’s anonymous friends sat down with the publication for interviews. Some friends referred to the letter.
Markle said in his statement: “ The article had inaccurately portrayed the contents of the letter and my response and had slandered me by saying I was dishonest, exploitative, publicity-seeking, indifferent and cold-hearted, and destroyed a loyal and dutiful daughter . I had to defend myself against that attack. “
ANL states that Meghan allowed her friends to brief People about the content of the letter, and therefore place it in the public domain. ANL says this gave them the right to publish extracts from the letter, with Thomas’s permission, to correct the record on his behalf. Meghan rejects that interpretation of the events and has denied organizing the friends to brief on her behalf.
The identities of the five friends are protected by the court.
In his testimony, Thomas, 76, said Meghan’s handwritten correspondence made no attempt at reconciliation. He said the letter did not even ask how he was doing after the heart attack he suffered before his daughter’s wedding in May 2018, which prevented him from attending the wedding.
Thomas said his decision to allow the newspaper to publish parts of the letter was motivated by the article People magazine.
“It was a total lie. It misrepresented the tone and substance of the letter Meg wrote to me in August 2018. I quickly decided that I wanted to correct that misrepresentation.“
– Thomas Markle
“I was shocked by what was said about me,” he said in the testimony. It was a total lie. It misrepresented the tone and substance of the letter Meg wrote to me in August 2018. I quickly decided that I wanted to correct that misrepresentation.
“It seemed to me that the article was either expressly authorized by Meg or that she at least knew about its publication and approved it,” The times reported.
Meghan, 39, sues Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, which featured a series of articles that reproduced parts of the handwritten letter sent to Mr Markle in August 2018.
She is seeking damages for alleged misuse of private information, copyright infringement and Data Protection Act violations for five articles, published in February 2019, containing excerpts from the “private and confidential” letter to her father.
He said, ‘It was criticism of me. The letter didn’t say she loved me. It didn’t even ask how I was doing. It showed no concern that I had had a heart attack or asked questions about my health. It actually meant the end of our relationship, not a reconciliation. “
Meghan, for her part, said she had suffered an “attack” on her private and family life when the Mail on Sunday published the letter she wrote to her father.
The Daily Beast previously reported that Meghan’s lawyers said she put herself in “an unguarded and potentially vulnerable position” by writing to her father, and never intended the letter to be made public.
Meghan also doubled down on allegations she did not cooperate with Finding freedom authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.
Scobie “confirmed in his testimony that neither he nor his co-author has met or interviewed the plaintiff or her husband for the Book,” says the legal argument presented by Meghan to the court.
ANL argued that the letter had an unusual status as it was written, they claimed, with the help of a senior Kensington Palace press officer.
Antony White QC for ANL argued, “No actual private letter from daughter to father would require any input from Kensington Palace’s communications team.”
White argued that there is “a realistic prospect that the plaintiff will not demonstrate that she was the sole author for the purposes of copyright” because of the written involvement of Jason Knauf, former communications secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. the letter.
However, Meghan’s team claims she is the sole author of the letter and says she spent many hours writing the letter on her iPhone and only shared a draft of it “ with her husband and Mr. Knauf for support as this was a very painful experience. process they went through with her, and because Mr. Knauf was responsible for keeping the senior members of the royal household informed of all public matters – the media spectacle surrounding Mr. Markle was such an issue. Mr Knauf commented on the electronic design in the form of “general ideas” rather than the actual wording. “
“It’s as good as one could find of a letter that a person with common sensitivities wouldn’t want to disclose to third parties, let alone in a mass media publication …“
– Justin Rushbrooke, QC
Justin Rushbrooke QC, who also represented the Duchess, described the handwritten letter as “a heartfelt plea from a haunted daughter to her father,” which Meghan sent to Markle “at his home in Mexico through a trusted contact … risk of interception. “
He said that the “content and nature of the letter were intrinsically private, personal and sensitive in nature” and Meghan therefore “had a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to the content of the letter.”
Rushbrooke added in written contributions, “It is as good as you could find an example of a letter that a person with ordinary sensibilities would not want to be disclosed to third parties, let alone in a mass media publication, in a sensational context. and to serve the commercial purposes of the newspaper. “
He said the decision to publish the letter was an assault on “her private life, family life and correspondence,” in documents submitted before the hearing.
Meghan’s team, described as “utterly fanciful,” claims Meghan did not consider the letter to be completely private.
The full trial of the Duchess’s claim was due to be heard in the Supreme Court this month, but last year the case was postponed until the fall of 2021 for confidential reasons.