A U.K. judge ruled last month that 'The Mail on Sunday' invaded Meghan's privacy by publishing a private letter she wrote to her dad.
A U.K. judge ruled on Tuesday that Associated Newspapers, the parent company of Mail on Sunday and the MailOnline website, should pay Meghan Markle's legal fees -- $1.87 million -- after she won part of her privacy lawsuit against the U.K. publisher.
Last month, Mark Warby, a High Court judge in London, ruled that The Mail on Sunday invaded 39-year-old Meghan's privacy by publishing a private letter she sent to her father, Thomas Markle, in 2018. Warby also ruled that the issue over the ownership of copyright should be examined at a limited trial.
A lawyer for The Mail on Sunday filed court documents stating they plan to appeal the judge's ruling to the Court of Appeal as they feel they are entitled to a full trial. A determination will be made on whether they have a chance to appeal before it can proceed.
Meghan released a statement about the court's ruling on her privacy lawsuit on Feb. 11.
"After two long years of pursuing litigation, I am grateful to the courts for holding Associated Newspapers and The Mail on Sunday to account for their illegal and dehumanizing practices," she said. "These tactics (and those of their sister publications MailOnline and The Daily Mail) are not new; in fact, they've been going on for far too long without consequence. For these outlets, it's a game. For me and so many others, it's real life, real relationships, and very real sadness. The damage they have done and continue to do runs deep."
"The world needs reliable, fact-checked, high-quality news," the statement continued. "What The Mail on Sunday and its partner publications do is the opposite. We all lose when misinformation sells more than truth, when moral exploitation sells more than decency, and when companies create their business model to profit from people's pain. But for today, with this comprehensive win on both privacy and copyright, we have all won. We now know, and hope it creates legal precedent, that you cannot take somebody's privacy and exploit it in a privacy case, as the defendant has blatantly done over the past two years."
Meanwhile, the world is anxiously awaiting Meghan and her husband, Prince Harry's, first sit-down interview since exiting the royal family, which was conducted by Oprah Winfrey. In a preview of Oprah With Meghan and Harry: A CBS Primetime Special, which will air on March 7, Oprah says that "no subject is off limits." Harry also references his late mother, Princess Diana, and notes how lucky he is to have Meghan's support given that his mother went through her well-publicized struggles with the royal family on her own.
"You know, for me, I'm just really relieved and happy to be sitting here talking to you with my wife by my side because I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for her going through this process by herself all those years ago," he says as he and Meghan hold hands. "Because it has been unbelievably tough for the two of us, but at least we had each other."
Watch the video below for more.
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