UK's Duchess Meghan says pain caused by tabloid paper runs deep

Meghan, Britain`s Duchess of Sussex, said on Thursday the pain caused by the Mail on Sunday newspaper and its publisher ran deep, saying the courts had held them to account for their "illegal and dehumanizing practices".

After a judge ruled the newspaper had breached her privacy, the British royal said, "After two long years of pursuing litigation, I am grateful to the courts for holding Associated Newspapers and The Mail on Sunday to account for their illegal and dehumanizing practices.

"These tactics (and those of their sister publications MailOnline and the Daily Mail) are not new; in fact, they’ve been going on for far too long without consequence. The damage they have done and continue to do runs deep," she said in a statement. 

Meghan, 39, the wife of Queen Elizabeth`s grandson Prince Harry, has sued publisher Associated Newspapers after its Mail on Sunday tabloid printed extracts of the handwritten letter she sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018.

She says the articles breached her privacy and copyright, and last month her lawyers asked London High Court judge Mark Warby to rule in her favour without the need for trial later this year, arguing the paper had no chance of winning. 

Meghan wrote the five-page letter to Markle after their relationship collapsed in the run-up to her glittering wedding to Harry in May 2018, which her father missed due to ill health and after he admitted posing for paparazzi pictures. The Mail published extracts in Feb. 2019 and has argued it did so to allow Markle to respond to comments made by Meghan`s anonymous friends in interviews with the US magazine People.