Meghan Markle’s father, Thomas, said he believed his daughter “expressly authorized” or at least “approved” an article in People magazine about him that was “a total lie” and that portrayed him as “dishonest, exploitative, in search of publicity, indifferent and cold-hearted”.
Thomas, whose bombshell testimony was contained in a testimony opened today at the London Supreme Court, said a controversial letter written to him by his daughter in August 2018, four months after he lost his marriage to Prince Harry due to an attack cardiac, it was a “criticism” to him that he thought “signaled the end of our relationship”.
Meghan is seeking a so-called “summary judgment” in its high-profile privacy and copyright action (ANL), triggered by the 2019 publication on Mail on Sunday of sections of the letter she sent to her distant father.
If successful, a summary trial in favor of Meghan would close most of the case without a full trial. Buckingham Palace is believed to be eager for Meghan to find a way to avoid being the first royal senior in living memory to undergo an exhaustive and potentially embarrassing cross-examination of her personal life on the witness stand.
In the statement, released today at the Supreme Court, Thomas, who is the chief witness of Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publisher of Mail on Sunday, said he felt he was “vilified” in the article in People, in which five anonymous friends of Meghan sat with the publication for interviews. Some friends referred to the letter.
Markle said in her statement: “The article provided an inaccurate picture of the letter’s content and my response and slandered me by saying that I was dishonest, exploitative, seeking publicity, indifferent and cold-hearted, leaving a loyal person and an obedient daughter devastated. I had to defend myself against that attack. ”
ANL argues that Meghan allowed his friends to present People about the letter’s content, thus placing it in the public domain. The ANL says that this gives them the right to publish excerpts from the letter, with Thomas’ consent, to correct the registration on his behalf. Meghan rejects this interpretation of the events and denied having organized friends to speak on his behalf.
The identity of the five friends is being protected by the court.
In his testimony, Thomas, 76, said Meghan’s handwritten correspondence made no attempt at reconciliation. He said the letter didn’t even ask how he was after his heart attack, which 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 in People magazine.
“It was a total lie. He misrepresented the tone and content of the letter Meg wrote to me in August 2018. I quickly decided that I wanted to correct this misrepresentation.“
– Thomas Markle
“I was shocked by what was said about me,” he said in the witness’s testimony. “It was a total lie. He misrepresented the tone and content of the letter Meg wrote to me in August 2018. I quickly decided that I wanted to correct this misrepresentation.
“It seemed to me that the article had either been expressly authorized by Meg or she had at least known and approved its publication,” The times reported.
Meghan, 39, is suing Associated Newspapers, the publisher of Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, on a series of articles that reproduced parts of the handwritten letter sent to Mr. Markle in August 2018.
She is seeking compensation for alleged misuse of private information, copyright infringement and violation of the Data Protection Act on five articles, published in February 2019, which included excerpts from the “private and confidential” letter to her father.
He said: “It was a criticism of me. The letter did not say that she loved me. He didn’t even ask how I was doing. He showed no concern that I had a heart attack and asked no questions about my health. In fact, it signaled the end of our relationship, not a reconciliation. “
Meghan said, in turn, that he had suffered an “aggression” in his private and family life when the Mail on Sunday he published the letter he had written to his father.
The Daily Beast previously reported that Meghan’s lawyers said she placed herself in “an unprotected and potentially vulnerable position” when writing to her father, and never intended to make the letter public.
Meghan also doubled claims that she did not cooperate with Finding Freedom authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.
Scobie “confirmed in his witness statement that neither he nor his co-author met or interviewed the Claimant or her husband for the Book,” says the legal argument presented to the court by Meghan’s side.
The ANL argued that the letter had an unusual status as it was written, they claimed, with the help of a senior press officer from Kensington Palace.
Antony White QC for ANL argued: “No truly private letter from the daughter to the father would require any contribution from the Kensington Palace communications team.”
White argued that there is “a real prospect that the claimant will fail to establish that he is the sole author in the sense of copyright” as a result of the written involvement of Jason Knauf, former communications secretary for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. the letter.
However, Meghan’s team argues that she is the only author of the letter, saying that she spent many hours writing the letter on her iPhone and just shared a draft “with her husband and Mr. Knauf for support, as it was a deeply painful process they lived through, and because Mr. Knauf was responsible for keeping the senior members of the royal household informed of any public issues – the media show surrounding Mr. Markle being one of those issues. Mr. Knauf provided comments on the Electronic Draft in the form of “general ideas”, as opposed to the actual wording. “
“It is as good an example as one could find of a letter that any person of ordinary sensibility would not like to be disclosed to third parties, much less in a mass media publication …“
– Justin Rushbrooke QC
Justin Rushbrooke QC, also representing the Duchess, described the handwritten letter as “a sincere plea from an anguished daughter to her father”, which Meghan sent to Markle “at her home in Mexico through a trusted contact … to reduce the risk of interception. ”
He said that “the letter’s content and character were intrinsically private, personal and sensitive in nature”, and Meghan, therefore, “had a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to the letter’s content”.
Rushbrooke added in written presentations: “It is the best example that could be found of a letter that any person of ordinary sensibility would not like to be divulged to third parties, much less in a mass media publication, in a sensational context and to serve the public. commercial purposes of the newspaper. ”
He said the decision to publish the letter was an attack on “his private life, his family life and his correspondence”, in documents submitted before the hearing.
Meghan’s team described as “totally fanciful” claims that Meghan did not see the letter as completely private.
The full trial of the duchess’s complaint was due to be heard in the High Court this month, but last year the case was postponed until autumn 2021 for a confidential reason.