Prince Harry and Meghan dialed in remotely from Los Angeles early on Friday morning to listen in on a hearing in Meghan’s historic High Court case against the Mail on Sunday newspaper. Meghan’s legal team, represented by David Sherbourne, faced off against the defendants from the Mail, represented by Anthony White. The case Friday was a “strike out hearing,” in which Justice Mark Warby responded to the Mail’s efforts to strike out some of the evidence presented by Meghan’s attorneys in her case—including a series of provocative Mail stories that had already drawn media attention for their criticism of Meghan.
The hearing at the High Court in London was being held remotely due to coronavirus. Introducing the case Justice Warby said this was “an unusual set of circumstances and a relatively new way of conducting a court hearing.” Legal representatives and journalists reporting on the case had dialed in to the hearing remotely, while Warby sat in the High Court alone.
It is the first time a senior member of the royal family has “virtually” attended a court hearing, and sources close to the Sussexes said they were feeling confident about the hearing, which they see as “a procedural step in a longer legal process.” The Sussexes believe they have a strong chance of winning their privacy and breach of copyright case against the Mail on Sunday, which the Duchess is suing after the newspaper published a private handwritten letter she sent to her father Thomas Markle following the royal wedding.
Over the course of the Friday morning hearing, it emerged that Meghan has not spoken to her father since her wedding day, though letters exchanged between the two are a central part of the case.
Sources close to Meghan, who fell out with her father after he staged a series of pictures for the paparazzi before her wedding, say that she believes the truth about her relationship with her father, which is at the center of the hearing, is already beginning to emerge. Thomas Markle told the Mail on Sunday he reached out many times to his daughter in a bid to repair their fractured relationship and claimed his calls and texts went unanswered, but texts from Harry and Meghan, released in court documents put forward by Meghan’s legal team, reveal that both the prince and Meghan repeatedly tried to contact Thomas offering to help him as he dealt with the fall-out from his home in Mexico.
Friday’s hearing is not the full trial, which has not yet been set, but a “strike out” hearing called for by the Mail on Sunday, who have applied to have some elements of the Duchess’s case removed from the court order claiming that they are not unlawful.
The newspaper is defending its decision to publish the letter Meghan wrote to her father after the royal wedding in 2018 and say the contents “were not private or confidential, self-evidently or at all.”
Meghan’s legal team argued that the publishing of the letter was not only a violation of several laws, but that the Mail on Sunday cherry-picked portions of its content to manipulate readers. The Duchess’s legal team also submitted several previous Mail on Sunday stories, including the infamous “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton,” in an effort to argue that the Mail on Sunday has conducted a long running campaign against her through the publication of intrusive, offensive, and untrue stories which will form the basis of her legal action against the newspaper.