Following her legal victory over The Mail on Sunday, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex was awarded £1 aka $1.35 for privacy invasion.
The Washington Post reports a written court order by appeal judges says Meghan will receive “£1 by way of nominal damages for misuse of private information.”
However, the newspaper will also have to pay a “confidential sum agreed between the parties” for copyright infringement, which legal experts think will be significant.
The Duchess’ spokeswoman told The Washington Post that the overall payout is “substantial,” and will be donated to charity.
As previously reported by The Root, in addition to The Mail on Sunday’s weak acknowledgement of losing (we can’t call it an apology), the paper must pay her legal fees, which could be around $2 million.
The case stems from The Mail on Sunday publishing a private letter Meghan wrote to her father in February 2019. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex filed suit, with Harry accusing the paper of “strategically omitting select paragraphs, specific sentences, and even singular words.”
The Mail on Sunday was ordered to print the following statement of facts on the front page of its paper and website under the headline The Duchess of Sussex.
“Following a hearing on 19-20 January 2021, and a further hearing on 5 May 2021, the Court has given judgment for The Duchess of Sussex on her claim for copyright infringement.
The Court found that Associated Newspapers infringed her copyright by publishing extracts of her handwritten letter to her father in The Mail on Sunday and in Mail Online.
Financial remedies have been agreed. The full judgment following the 19-20 January hearing and the Court’s summary of it can be found here and here.”
According to The Washington Post, The Duchess’ team would want to recoup The Mail on Sunday’s profits from publishing the letter.
Hashim Mude, a visiting lecturer in media law at City, University of London said to get accurate numbers the paper would have to provide “audited schedule of receipts, how many physical copies of the newspaper were sold, what was the overall profit generated from the infringing material and the costs incurred in generating that profit.”
Look, whatever amount The Mail on Sunday ends up paying, it won’t be enough to compensate for the endless pain, anguish and danger they’ve caused Meghan.