Meghan Markle Gets Only $1 After Winning Privacy Lawsuit Against ‘The Mail’

Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, will receive £1 ($1.35) from The Mail on Sunday after her lawsuit against them for publishing a private letter she had sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle. The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper that has not shied away from mocking Markle in the past, publishing articles with accusatory titles like “Meghan Markle’s ‘mask slipped’ to show ‘hostile behaviour’ in an unearthed 2016 interview promoting Suits” and “Is Meghan ‘bullying’ probe being kicked into long grass?”

Court documents confirm the paltry sum and corroborate that the newspaper’s sister site MailOnline will also be accepting defeat and not bringing the long-running case to the U.K. Supreme Court for appeal. In addition to the £1 fine, Associated Newspapers, The Mail on Sunday‘s publisher, will likely be forced to pay a significant portion of Meghan’s legal fees which may total more than £1 million.

Markle asserted that the three-year-long legal battle between Associated Newspapers was not for monetary gain. On her joint Instagram account with Prince Harry, Markel posted that her court triumph was “a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what’s right.”

In 2019, The Mail on Sunday published the letter in question, which was addressed to her estranged father after Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry. The letter asked her father to avoid disclosing private information to the tabloids, and contained the harrowing line “you have broken my heart into a million pieces.”

A ruling by judges in early December stated that Markle should have “reasonable expectation” of privacy surrounding the contents of her letter to Thomas Markle. Associated News argued that Markle’s case was worthy of going to trial, but they were shot down by the courts.

The Mail on Sunday previously solicited the names of five of Markle’s friends who spoke anonymously about the Dutchess for a 2018 article in People. The court settlement ordered that the names of these individuals would not be permitted for disclosure in any legal proceedings.

Additionally, both The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline were told to publish apologies. The newspapers proceeded to post the articles on Boxing Day, which is notorious for being one of the calmest news days of the calendar year.