Meghan Markle has successfully stopped the Mail on Sunday from revealing the identity of her five friends, for now.
High Court Judge Mark Warby ruled on Wednesday that the paper cannot name the friends who anonymously came to Meghan’s defense as part of a February 2019 People cover story. “I have concluded that, for the time being at least, the court should grant the claimant the order that she seeks,” the judge said.
A source from the team representing Meghan told People, “The Duchess felt it was necessary to take this step to try and protect her friends—as any of us would—and we’re glad this was clear. We are happy that the Judge has agreed to protect these five individuals.”
In July, the duchess issued a statement as part of her ongoing suit against Associated Newspapers and the Mail on Sunday for publishing excerpts from what she described as a “private and confidential” letter sent to her father in August 2018, three months after her wedding to Prince Harry.
In a witness statement obtained by The Telegraph as part of an application filed at the High Court in London, Meghan said, “Associated Newspapers, the owner of The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, is threatening to publish the names of five women—five private citizens—who made a choice on their own to speak anonymously with a U.S. media outlet more than a year ago, to defend me from the bullying behavior of Britain’s tabloid media.” She continued, “These five women are not on trial, and nor am I. The publisher of the Mail on Sunday is the one on trial. It is this publisher that acted unlawfully and is attempting to evade accountability; to create a circus and distract from the point of this case—that the Mail on Sunday unlawfully published my private letter.”
The Mail on Sunday claims in its defense, however, that one of her friends had already referred to the existence of the letter when they spoke to People anonymously. In response to the royal’s statement, a spokesman for the paper also stated that while the Mail had no intention of revealing the names of her friends, “their evidence is at the heart of the case and we see no reason why their identities should be kept secret. That is why we told the Duchess’s lawyers last week that the question of their confidentiality should be properly considered by the Court.”
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