Meghan Markle Wins High Court Battle to Keep Identity of Five Best Friends Anonymous

Meghan Markle wins High Court bid to keep names of five best friends hidden. image: Twitter

Meghan Markle has won a High Court bid to keep secret the identities of five friends who gave an anonymous interview to a US magazine.

It is the latest stage of the Duchess of Sussex’s legal action against Associated Newspapers for publishing parts of a private letter she sent to her estranged father Thomas Markle.

In a ruling today, Mr Justice Warby concluding “for the time being at least” the Duchess of Sussex should be granted an injunction which protects the identities of the five individuals.

The Duchess of Sussex is suing the national newspaper publisher over five articles – two in the Mail on Sunday and three on MailOnline – published in February 2019 that reproduced parts of a handwritten letter she sent to her father Thomas Markle, 75, in August 2018. The group of five friends will remain only identified in confidential court documents after Meghan’s lawyers argued they had a right to anonymity, both as confidential journalistic sources and under their own privacy right

It is the latest stage of the Duchess of Sussex’s legal action against Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Mail on Sunday.

Justin Rushbrooke QC, representing the duchess, said in written submissions to the court: ‘To force the claimant, as the defendant urges this court to do, to disclose their identities to the public at this stage would be to exact an unacceptably high price for pursuing her claim for invasion of privacy against the defendant in respect of its disclosure of the letter.

‘On her case, which will be tried in due course, the defendant has been guilty of a flagrant and unjustified intrusion into her private and family life. ‘Given the close factual nexus between the letter and the events leading up to the defendant’s decision to publish its contents, it would be a cruel irony were she required to pay that price before her claim has even been determined.’

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Tony Winterburn

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