Meghan Markle’s court case against Mail on Sunday proves she won’t stop
When Meghan was accused of collaborating with authors for a biography, her lawyers clapped back – throwing her friend under the bus.
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Being an actor must be a tough gig. Constant rejection, long hours and only the remotest of chances that your star will shine brighter than any of the other of the tens of thousands of wannabes who flock to Los Angeles in a bid to make it.
Meghan Markle made it. By 2006 the 25-year-old was making up to $31,000-a-week as a suitcase girl on Deal Or No Deal and in 2011 snagged a role on Suits. Sure, the legal drama was hardly an awards show darling but it still ran for nine series (ten including the last one which ran sans the now-royal) and managed to rack up a devoted global audience.
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By now, millions of words must have been written about Meghan, a woman who traded life as an actress and lifestyle blogger, to take on what would only be a 20-month stint as an HRH before ditching that to stage a sensational US comeback, this time with a dishy Prince by her side.
What often gets lost in all the coverage of the Sussexes and their various controversies (and my word, it has been a busy few years) is that Meghan is a woman whose life has been defined by grit, determination and hard work. You don’t end up on a long-running TV series by cowering in misery every time someone tells you ‘no’ or throwing in the towel when you find a door slammed in your face.
All of which, I think, goes a long way to understanding Meghan’s current tenacious legal strategy.
This week, a court in London heard from lawyers representing both the duchess and the Mail on Sunday’s parent company in the latest in a series of preliminary hearings that have been going on since May. (The 39-year-old is suing the tabloid over its publication in 2019 of parts of a letter she had sent her estranged father Thomas Markle, alleging breach of privacy and copyright infringement. The paper is vigorously defending the lawsuit.)
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In the latest headline-grabbing development, lawyers acting for the Mail told the court they wanted to amend their defence in the wake of the publication of Finding Freedom, the distinctly pro-Sussex biography of the duo that came out last month. During the hearing they argued that Harry and Meghan “co-operated with the authors of the recently published book Finding Freedom to put out their version of certain events.” Antony White, QC, who is representing the Mail, said the blockbuster biography had “every appearance of having been written with their (Meghan and Harry’s) extensive co-operation”.
Meghan’s star legal eagle Justin Rushbrooke QC however denied the allegation, saying in a submission: “The claimant and her husband did not collaborate with the authors on the book, nor were they interviewed for it, nor did they provide photographs to the authors for the book.”
(In a witness statement, Omid Scobie, one of Freedom’s authors said that the Sussexes “did not authorise the book and have never been interviewed for it”.)
Meghan’s team later went further, later bluntly dismissing Freedom and categorising some of the book’s claims as “extremely anodyne”, “the product of creative licence” or “inaccurate.”
In a witness statement, one of Meghan’s lawyers offered a number of examples from the book which they say are false or “easily found in the public domain” such as the drinks that the couple are said to have had on their first date and details of a supposed visit to a Botswana safari camp.
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What is notable here is that Scobie has been one of Meghan’s most outspoken press cheerleaders, a sometimes lone voice in the UK media cabal offering a far more sympathetic and positive take on the duchess and her royal career than other veteran royal reporters.
In Freedom, Scobie and co-author Carolyn Durand write of the countdown to the duchess’ final official outing at the Commonwealth Day service on March 9 this year: “Meghan turned around to hug goodbye the last remaining people in the room, including an author of this book. With the state room almost empty except for a few familiar faces, the tears the duchess had been holding back were free to flow.”
It would be interesting to know whether the author and Meghan would be hugging now, given her legal team’s very public and blunt dismissal of the book and the hit the title’s credibility has taken.
And this is where we come back to Meghan’s acting career – not her on-screen performances but the inherent tenacity and strength she must possess as a person to succeed in such a savage industry.
With a date finally set for the Old Bailey showdown to begin – January 11, mark your calendars accordingly – the stakes are ramping up. However, it would seem that the 39-year-old has no thought of capitulating in the face of negative headlines or mounting legal bills.
A source close to the duchess this week told Vanity Fair: “There’s no wavering. She is resolute that she intends to see this to the end. It’s costing a lot of money, but no one has been in the dark about the scale of this and what it’s going to cost. The duchess’s eyes were wide open when she went into this, and she feels as strongly now as she did then that she has to draw a line in the sand.”
Sure Harry and Meghan are said to be worth somewhere between $30 and $60 million, however it was revealed that the costs for both sides are likely to amount to an estimated $5 million, a sum that judge Master Francesca Kaye called “excessive” and “disproportionate.”
Even for two people with a newly minted and potentially highly lucrative Netflix contract tucked away at home, that is a huge sum of money to have riding on only one of their court cases. (The Mail case is only one of the family’s various legal actions: Harry is suing the Sun and the Daily Mirror for alleged phone hacking; in July the couple launched legal action after photos of their son Archie were allegedly taken by a drone and in September, it was revealed that she is suing the photo agency Splash News over paparazzi photos taken of her waking with her son in Canada taken earlier this year.)
The cost of this case for Harry and Meghan could go beyond the bottom line.
By the time that Meghan’s case reaches court, the case will have dragged on for 15 months, a handful of months shy of the 20 months she notched up as a frontline member of the royal family. Given that the Sussexes are assiduously working to set up their new charitable entity Archewell which will be publicly debuted in 2021, month after month of media coverage of this bruising court case will only serve as a distraction.
There are many reasons why a more bluntly prudent person would quit now – the money, the stress, the fact they are starting their new life mired in a protracted and messy legal brawl.
However, none of these pragmatic considerations seem to count for a jot in contrast to Meghan’s remarkable intractability when it comes to doing what she thinks is right.
Remember, this is a woman who aged 11-year-sold saw a sexist dishwashing liquid commercial and rather than mutely internalising her rage took action, writing to the company to demand they change the slogan and even being interviewed on TV about her campaign, saying: “I don’t think it’s right for kids to grow up thinking that mum does everything.”
That fortitude is a quality that is said to have endeared herself to her father-in-law Prince Charles, who is reported to have nicknamed her ‘Tungsten’ out of admiration for her strength.
And perhaps this is one of the most fascinating aspects about the duchess: The woman not only has convictions but she sticks to them with a vice-like grip. Rightly or wrongly, if she thinks something is the correct course of action there is no wavering or equivocation.
Now, that approach seems to have been extended to her legal strategy, setting the scene for a high-stakes legal showdown.
As of this weekend, we are just over 100 days away from Meghan likely fronting the court in London for the final, dramatic act in this lawyerly saga. Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s going to be gripping viewing. But then, with Meghan in a starring role, would we ever expect anything else?
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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