The Duchess of Sussex has demanded that the Mail on Sunday publish a front page apology and pay £ 750,000 ($ 1,047.56) down payment for her legal costs, following her “comprehensive victory” in legal action against the publisher. from the newspaper last month.
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Meghan Markle, 39, has also asked the Superior Court to order the Mail on Sunday to hand over copies of a handwritten letter sent to his estranged father, Thomas Markle.
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Demandó a Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), el editor de Mail on Sunday Y MailOnline, for a series of articles that reproduced parts of the letter sent to his father in August 2018.
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Markle claimed that the articles, which were published in February 2019, involved misuse of her private information, violated her copyright, and violated the Data Protection Act.
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The Superior Court granted summary judgment in relation to your privacy claim, meaning that you won that claim without going to trial, as well as most of your copyright claim.
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Markle’s attorney, Ian Mill QC, requested a court order to “restrict acts of copyright infringement and misuse of private information” at a remote hearing on Tuesday.
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In written communications, he said: “This case is a paradigmatic example of one in which there is a very real need for a court order.
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“It is necessary to protect the rights of the claimant and stop the continuous acts of infringement.
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“The defendant has not offered any compromise, nor has he provided the copies he has of the letter so that the threat of infringing and, furthermore, misusing his private information remains real and, inexplicably, the defendant has not yet removed the offending items from MailOnline.
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“This is in the face of a judgment that has found, in the clearest possible terms, that the defendant’s acts of publishing those articles infringe the plaintiff’s rights.
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“Consequently, at the time of writing this report, the defendant continues to commit the same acts that the court has declared illegal,” he added.
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He also requested an order for ANL to publish a statement about the Duchess’s victory on the cover of the Mail on Sunday and on the home page of the MailOnline “To deter future offenders.”
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It was also willing to “limit its damages” for the misuse of private information with “nominal compensation,” Mill said, to “avoid the need to incur the cost and discussion of these issues.”
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Antony White QC, representing ANL, said his client planned to appeal against the summary judgment ruling, arguing that “it would have a real prospect of success.”
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He said that Markle’s withdrawal from his claim for damages, rather than seeking nominal damages, was “a radical change of position”, adding in relation to his request for nominal damages: “It is suggested that £ 1, £ 2 or £ 5 do. “
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White also argued that any order requiring ANL to deliver copies of the letter should be put on hold until any appeal against the judgment can be determined.
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ANL’s proposed grounds of appeal argued that the Superior Court did not assess the facts relied on by the publisher as “undermining or diminishing the weight of the plaintiff’s right to privacy.”
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In its ruling last month, the judge ruled that the publication of Meghan Markle’s letter to her father was “manifestly excessive and therefore illegal.”
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The judge, now Lord Justice Warby, after his promotion to the Court of Appeal, said: “It was, in short, a personal and private letter. Most of what was published was about the plaintiff’s own behavior, her feelings of distress over her father’s behavior, as she viewed it, and the resulting rift between them.
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“These are inherently private and personal matters.”
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He said that “the only defensible justification for such interference was to correct some inaccuracies about the letter,” contained in an article in People magazine published a few days before the five ANL articles.
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But he added: “The inescapable conclusion is that, except to the very limited extent that I have identified, the disclosures made were not a necessary or proportionate means to fulfill that purpose.
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“For the most part, they didn’t serve that purpose at all. Taken together, the disclosures were manifestly excessive and therefore illegal. “
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Lord Justice Warby also said that ANL’s arguments about the copyright ownership of the letter “seem to me to occupy the land of shadows between improbability and unreality.”
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The hearing before Lord Justice Warby is expected to conclude on Tuesday and it is not known whether it will give a ruling today or be reserved for a later date.
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