Daily Mail to pay Meghan Markle damages of just £1

The Duchess of Sussex will also receive an unspecified sum from the newspaper for breach of copyright.

The newspaper will have to pay the legal costs of Meghan, pictured her on the American chat show Ellen.

The Duchess of Sussex will receive only £1 ($1.89) from The Mail on Sunday for invading her privacy by publishing the handwritten letter she sent to her estranged father, a court document has revealed.

Meghan Markle will also receive an unspecified sum from the newspaper for breach of copyright. A spokesman for the duchess said it was a “substantial” sum and would be donated to charity.

Although she could have been awarded a five- or six-figure sum for misuse of private information after the court found in her favour, she had already said she would accept a “nominal award” to save time and cost debating the issue.

The High Court ruled in the duchess’s favour in March without a full trial, a decision confirmed by the Court of Appeal last month. The newspaper will have to pay her costs arising from the appeal, starting with a payment of £300,000 this week.

The court document also confirms that The Mail on Sunday will not seek to appeal at the Supreme Court.

Ms Markle, 40, sued Associated Newspapers, also the publisher of Mail Online, over five articles that reproduced parts of a “personal and private” letter to Thomas Markle, 77, in August 2018. She said after the appeal court ruling: “This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what’s right.

“While this win is precedent-setting, what matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel and profits from the lies and pain that they create.”

In a summary of the court’s decision, Geoffrey Vos, the Master of the Rolls, said the duchess had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the contents of the letter. “Those contents were personal, private and not matters of legitimate public interest.”

Mark Stephens, the head of media litigation at Howard Kennedy, said: “You can look at it in two ways. She announced right at the beginning of this that it was about the principle, not the money. So that might play to her.

“Normally for that kind of thing I would have thought you would be getting £75,000 to £125,000. The copyright damages would probably be £25,000 to £30,000.

“The legal costs would be astronomical. It is probably £2.5m for her and £1.8m for the Mail.”

As part of the settlement the Mail outlets have also been ordered to avoid disclosing the names of five of Ms Markle’s friends who anonymously spoke to People magazine for a 2018 article.

The Times