The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline were also ordered to carry front and homepage declarations that they had lost the legal case, with the courts even specifying which font the statements should appear in. The outlets chose to do that on Boxing Day, one of the quietest news days of the year.
Associated Newspapers had argued that Meghan’s case should have gone to trial but judges concluded ruled otherwise.
A ruling at the start of December said the duchess had a “reasonable expectation” of privacy regarding the contents of the letter to her father, Thomas Markle.
“Those contents were personal, private and not matters of legitimate public interest,” said appeal judge Sir Geoffrey Vos.
Meghan celebrated that victory by calling for a reshaping of the tabloid industry and spoke of how she had been patient in the face of “deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks” and criticised a “tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create”.
At the time Associated Newspapers claimed it was willing to take the case to the supreme court but this turned out to be an empty threat.
Focus is now likely to turn to the actions of the duchess’s husband, Prince Harry, who is suing both Rupert Murdoch’s News UK and Daily Mirror publisher Reach over phone-hacking claims in a case that could be heard later this year.
