Lawyers representing the Duchess of Sussex said Tuesday that she suffered a "triple invasion of privacy" when the Mail on Sunday published excerpts from a letter to her father, Thomas Markle, amid an ongoing legal battle in court, BBC reports (opens in new tab) here), Princess Meghan is suing the publisher Associated Newspapers for misuse of personal information, violation of data protection laws, and copyright infringement for the publication of portions of a letter she sent to her father in August 2018. The Mail on Sunday published five articles about Princess Meghan's letters to her father.

On the first day of the two-day hearing in the Remote Superior Court, Meghan's lawyers asked Judge Warby for a "summary judgment." Meghan's attorney, Justin Rushbrook, added that Meghan's letter was "a heartfelt plea from a distressed daughter to her father" and that "the content and character of the letter was essentially private, personal, and sensitive."

Rushbrook noted that the Duchess of Sussex "had a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the contents of the letter" and that it was "self-evident that publication of the letter was likely to be devastating to the claimant."

Attorney Antony White, representing Associated Newspapers, argued that Princess Meghan wrote the letter "with a view to it being made public at some point in the future" for the purpose of refuting "accusations that she is an uncaring, unloving daughter." White noted that Princess Meghan consulted with Kensington Palace's communications team before sending the letter, saying, "At the very least, she must have understood that her father might choose to make it public." White added, "A truly private letter from a daughter to her father shouldn't need the input of Kensington Palace's communications team." [But Meghan's lawyer added that even the Mail on Sunday article about the letter emphasized that it was private, and that public interest in making the letter public was "sub-par." Lashbrook told the court, "By all accounts, the defendant published far more in the form of excerpts from the letter than could be justified in the public interest."

In a witness statement submitted to the hearing, Thomas Markle claimed that he "had no intention of speaking publicly about Meg's letter" until he read an article in People in which a friend of Meghan's said that Meghan had sent the letter with the intent to repair her relationship with her father. Markle instead said that the letter "signals the end" of her relationship with Meghan and insisted that she "must defend herself" against the "People" article, which she claimed portrayed her as "disloyal, exploitative, world-weary, uncaring, and callous" .

Markle argued that she wanted to "set the record straight" by allowing the letter to be published, but Meghan's lawyer dismissed this argument as "ridiculous."

The summary judgment hearing will continue on Wednesday. A full hearing of Meghan's privacy claim was also originally scheduled for this month (Independent (open in new tab)), but last October was granted a postponement until fall 2021, citing "confidentiality" reasons.