British tabloid newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, will be paying Meghan Markle just $1.80 (£1) for damages and invasion of her privacy for publishing a private letter she had sent to her father, Thomas Markle.
The given sum is set out in court documents which also formally confirms that the publication has accepted defeat and will not be taking the case to the supreme court for an appeal.
The Duchess has always claimed that her three-year legal battle with Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Mail on Sunday and sister website MailOnline, was more on principles rather than money.
As reported by The Guardian, the Duchess’s spokesperson says her victory “demonstrated the strength of both claims and the financial remedies would be based on Meghan’s right to an account of the newspaper’s profits following her win.”
The spokesperson has also said the payments would be donated to charity.
Associated Newspapers had initially tried to argue that Markle’s case should go to trial, but judges thought otherwise.
A ruling made last December 2021, said the Duchess had a “reasonable expectation” of privacy regarding the contents of the letter to her father.
“Those contents were personal, private and not matters of legitimate public interest,” said the appeal judge Sir Geoffrey Vos.
As part of the court settlement, the news outlet will also be paying an unspecified sum for a separate case of copyright infringement for publishing bulk parts of Markle’s letter. The Mail on Sunday will also be covering a substantial part of Megha’s legal costs, which could be more than $1.8m.
The publication was also ordered to carry out a front-page and homepage declaration stating they had lost the legal case, with the court also specifying in which font is to be used for the statement. The Guardian reports that Mail on Sunday and MailOnline had chosen to publish the statement on Boxing Day, which is the quietest news day of the year.
Focus has now shifted to the Duchess’s husband, Prince Harry, who is also suing both Rupert Murdoch’s and the Daily Mirror‘s publisher, Reach, over a phone-hacking claim. The case is expected to be heard later this year.