Meghan Markle faces a setback in her battle against publisher Associated Newspapers. The London court ruled that the newspaper may adjust the defense to add details from a recently published book.
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Markle challenged the gossip magazine Mail on Sunday, which is owned by Associated Newspapers, went to court last October. She did so after the newspaper published excerpts from a handwritten letter to her father in 2018.
The lawsuit is scheduled for next year, but the Mail asked permission to amend the case, arguing that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had collaborated on a biography about them. The book Finding freedom was published in August. According to the newspaper, this proves that Markle herself also wanted to share her private life, and parts of the handwritten letter, with the aim of putting herself in a positive light. According to the newspaper’s lawyer, Antony White, the details in the book could only come from the couple themselves, or from friends close to them. “It seems that this book was written with their cooperation,” he said.
Prince Harry and Markle deny all cooperation, and according to their attorney, Justin Rushbrooke, the Mail no proof of the collaboration. One of the authors of the book Finding freedom, Omid Scobie, testified that the couple had not consented to the publication and that it was not interviewed. Rushbrooke asked the court not to admit the speculative claims, but Judge Francesca Kaye ruled that the Mail be ‘not completely indisputable’.
This decision is the second setback for Markle. In May, the court rejected her claim that the newspaper had acted unfairly and sparked the fight between her father. Markle took a legal blow when the judge agreed that the identities of five friends who gave anonymous interviews to the magazine People, should not be made public.
According to the Mail the publication of the handwritten letter was in response to those interviews, but Markle’s team insists that they had not allowed her friends to conduct those interviews.
The trial is scheduled for January 11 and would last between seven and 10 days.
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