New York Daily News: MANHATTAN, By Joseph Wilkinson – Meghan Markle will have to settle for a pound of flesh and £1 in damages.
The Duchess of Sussex will get the piddling pound — a buck and 35 cents on this side of the pond — from British tabloid operator Associated Newspapers after winning her invasion of privacy lawsuit against the company.
She’ll also get compensation for a separate copyright infringement case, but that payout wasn’t specified, according to the Guardian.
But Meghan’s not walking away empty-handed: Associated Newspapers already agreed to cover 90 percent of her legal fees — reportedly over $1.8 million — and published a front page apology to the duchess on December 26.
“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,” the apology read in part.
Meghan, 40, said throughout the case she wasn’t really worried about the money.
“This is a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what’s right,” she said in early December. “While this win is precedent setting, what matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create.”
Associated Newspapers owns The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, and in 2018 the tabloid published large portions of a physical letter that Meghan wrote to her father, Thomas.
Meghan sued for invasion of privacy and copyright infringement and embarked on a lengthy legal fight to prove she was in the right.
“From day one, I have treated this lawsuit as an important measure of right versus wrong,” she said. “In the nearly three years since this began, I have been patient in the face of deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks.”
Associated Newspapers finally dropped its appeals and admitted defeat in December, agreeing to the apology and the payments for damages.
