Meghan Markle: Judge slams both sides in ‘tit-for-tat’ court battle

The Duchess of Sussex won the right to keep her best friends’ identities secret, as a judge criticised both sides for going public.

Meghan, 39, won the right to keep the identities of her five best friends secret after arguing that publicly naming them was an “unacceptable price to pay”. Picture: Getty

The Duchess of Sussex was yesterday accused by a judge of using the media to fight her privacy battle outside of court.

Meghan, 39, won the right to keep the identities of her five best friends secret after arguing that publicly naming them was an “unacceptable price to pay” in her battle with The Mail on Sunday. She is suing the publisher of the newspaper and the MailOnline website over its publication of extracts from a letter she sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, 76.

Mr Justice Warby said at the High Court in London that the anonymity order would shield the friends “from the glare of publicity in the pre-trial stage”. He said that the decision would be reviewed as the case progressed.

The duchess applied to keep secret the identity of friends allegedly in her “inner circle” who spoke to the US magazine People before the publication of an article that included details about her relationship with her father.

The judge said that both sides “have demonstrated an eagerness to play out the merits of their dispute in public, outside the courtroom, and primarily in media reports”. There was evidence that the duchess’s side “have been energetically briefing the media about these proceedings from the outset”.

Before her witness statement was made public, details were posted on the Twitter feed of Omid Scobie, co-author of the biography Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of A Modern Family, which was serialised in The Times. It was “accompanied by a quotation attributed to ‘a close source’ criticising the Mail for wishing to ‘target five innocent women through the pages of its newspapers and its website’,” Mr Justice Warby said. He added: “Mr Scobie then tweeted the passage from the witness statement that I have quoted above. The inference invited is that he had been provided with a copy by representatives of the claimant. This seems very likely.”

MailOnline had also revealed details of the legal case, including an article headlined “Meghan Markle’s private texts to best pal Jessica Mulroney could be released in bombshell court case”.

The judge said that the article correctly reported that the publisher of The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline would seek disclosure of email exchanges with Ms Mulroney, 40, a Canadian stylist. The friends may have to be identified if called by Meghan to give evidence, the judge suggested. “At trial, that is a price that may have to be paid in the interests of transparency.”

Meghan and the newspaper were both found to have overstated the “tit-for-tat criticisms” for publicising details of the case. The judge said that the newspaper publisher has not yet “made good” its claim that the real motivation of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in bringing the case is “to wage their own campaign against the press”.

The duchess has said that the five friends covered by the anonymity order are young mothers. People described them as a “longtime friend”, “former co-star”, “friend from LA”; “one-time colleague” and a “close confidante”.

The duchess is seeking damages for alleged misuse of private information, copyright infringement and breach of the Data Protection Act. The Mail on Sunday has claimed that she permitted information about her personal relationship with her father, including the existence of the letter and a description of its contents, to enter the public domain via the article in People.

She claims that she only discovered that her friends had given interviews after the article was published. The hearing, due to take seven to ten days, will be held between January and February.

The Times