Meghan: Mail on Sunday to appeal over privacy case

The Mail on Sunday will apply for permission to appeal against the Duchess of Sussex's High Court privacy victory, the paper's owners have said.

A spokeswoman for Associated Newspapers said it was "disappointed" by the trial judge's refusal of leave to appeal.

Lord Justice Warby said he saw no grounds to overturn his judgment but the publisher had the right to take its application to the Court of Appeal.

Meghan brought the claim over the publication of a letter to her father.

Last month, the duchess was granted "summary judgement" in relation to her privacy claim, meaning she won that part of the case without having to go to trial.

At a remote hearing on Tuesday, Lord Justice Warby refused permission for Associated Newspapers (ANL) - publisher of the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline - to appeal the ruling.

He also granted the duchess an interim £450,000 payment towards legal costs.

The court heard her total bill was £1.5m, which ANL called "extraordinary".

The Duchess of Sussex took legal action after a series of articles published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper and MailOnline in February 2019 reproduced parts of a handwritten letter sent from Meghan to her father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018.

In February, the judge ruled she had a "reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private".

Lawyers for the Mail had argued the duchess had intended the letter's contents to become public and it formed part of a media strategy.

At Tuesday's hearing, ANL's lawyers applied for permission to appeal against that ruling on 10 grounds.

But Lord Justice Warby refused permission to appeal, saying it had "no real prospect" of success.

He added: "The Court of Appeal, of course, may take a different view and the defendant has a right to renew this application to a Court of Appeal judge."

A spokeswoman for ANL said the publisher would be applying to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal against the judge's decisions on both the privacy and copyright claims.

The duchess' lawyers earlier asked the judge to order ANL to hand over any copies of the letter, and destroy any electronic copies of it or any notes made about it.

They also sought to have ANL publish a statement about Meghan's victory on the front page of the Mail on Sunday and the home page of MailOnline "to act as a deterrent to future infringers".

Lord Justice Warby said he would make "a limited order for publication and dissemination" of the result of the summary judgement application, but that it would be "considerably more limited than the order sought".

The judge also said he would not make an order for "delivery up or destruction" of any copies of the duchess' letter to her father "at this stage".

He ruled that any "financial remedies" to be granted to the duchess for misuse of private information would be considered at a further hearing in late April or early May.

That same hearing would also deal with the duchess' claim under the Data Protection Act, as well as "the issue of copyright ownership", he said.