It’s been more than a year after Meghan Markle began her legal battle against Associated Newspapers, the parent company of the Mail on Sunday, but on Thursday, a clear indication came that the sparring will not end anytime soon. After a virtual hearing, a judge ruled that the trial will be pushed from its scheduled date in January to October or November 2021.
At the hearing, a number of different matters went before High Court Justice Mark Warby, and according to the Daily Mail, it was followed by a private hearing that a court order said was “in order to protect the confidentiality of some of the facts put in evidence.”
When Warby granted the postponement, he said the “primary basis” for the ruling was a “confidential” matter. “The right decision in all the circumstances is to grant the application to adjourn,” he added. “That means that the trial date of January 11, 2021 will be vacated and the trial will be refixed for a new date in the autumn.”
After the hearing concluded, Meghan’s 76-year-old estranged father, Thomas Markle, released a statement opposing the postponement. “None of my male relatives has ever lived beyond 80 years of age. I am a realist and I could die tomorrow,” it read. “The sooner this case takes place the better.” Markle has previously said that he is willing to testify at the trial, which centers on the Mail’s decision to publish excerpts of a letter Meghan wrote to her father in August 2018.
A lawyer for Associated Newspapers told the Sun, “He is anxious to have his day in court so that he can tell the truth in public.”
At the Thursday hearing, Meghan’s legal team also filed a motion for summary judgement, in order to skip a jury trial. That ruling is still outstanding, and according to ITV, it will be taken up at a hearing on January 12. If the request is granted, neither Meghan nor her friends would have to appear in person to testify.
It’s not clear if the confidential matter that Warby relied on had anything to do with the September ruling that information from the biography Finding Freedom would be admissible when the matter finally comes to trial. A source previously told the Telegraph that Meghan’s decision to request summary judgement came because of the added strain of the biography’s inclusion. “It is a massive expansion of the case,” the source said. “The volume of additional evidence, disclosures and research required could not meet the original timetable.”
Meghan’s lawyers also filed an appeal of the Finding Freedom decision at the Thursday hearing. According to the Sun, Warby denied this appeal in open court.
A source close to Meghan told Vanity Fair that an earlier conclusion to the matter would be preferable. “What started as a lawsuit over a private letter has escalated into something much bigger,” the source said, “and there is a feeling that a line needs to be drawn.”
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