Meghan Markle called for 'nothing other than peace' in letter to her father, court hears

Meghan Markle asked her father for “nothing other than peace” in a letter she wrote shortly after her wedding to Prince Harry, it’s been revealed.

The last line of the letter Meghan wrote to her father, Thomas Markle Snr, was read out by her lawyer in court for the first time on Tuesday as her team made their bid to avoid a full trial.

It revealed she said: “I ask for nothing other than peace. And I wish the same for you.”

During the hearing, her team said the publication of a letter she wrote to her father was a “triple barrelled attack”.

Meghan is suing the Mail On Sunday’s publishers, Associated Newspapers Ltd, for alleged misuse of private information, copyright infringement and breach of the Data Protection Act, after it published a letter she wrote to her father after her wedding to Prince Harry.

The letter to Markle Snr was published under the headline “Revealed: The handwritten letter showing true tragedy of Meghan's rift with father she says has 'broken her heart into a million pieces' - and why he feels forced to make the 'devastating' missive public”.

The case returned to court on Tuesday as Meghan’s team applied to have the case heard as a summary judgement, avoiding bringing in witnesses and going before a jury.

If she loses her application, the trial will be heard in the Autumn, with her father highly likely to give evidence in court.

Some of the duchess’s friends could also be pulled in to give evidence.

In court on Tuesday, the first day of an expected two day hearing for the application, Meghan’s team argued the letter’s publication breached the privacy she could expect for her correspondence and her home and family life.

Her lawyer, Justin Rushbrooke, read out some of the texts between Meghan and her father, which they said showed she and Prince Harry were struggling to get in touch with him before their wedding, and that she found out about his heart attack via TMZ.

He said Markle Snr continued to give “damaging interviews” to the press after Harry and Meghan’s wedding, which he had missed because of his health.

He said the “contents and character of the letter were obviously private”, that they spoke of her “constant love” for her father and her financial support.

Rushbrooke said the letter also discussed the “painful” impact of his conduct upon her, including a “sense of betrayal”.

Watch: Meghan wins bid to delay trial in Mail on Sunday privacy claim

Read more: Meghan Markle's court battle returns as she bids to avoid full trial

ANL has previously argued that the letter cannot be deemed private because its existence was hinted at by Meghan’s friends who gave an interview to People magazine, defending her.

They also won a bid to use the Finding Freedom biography in its defence case, which led to Meghan admitting she had allowed a friend to give her side of a story to the authors because she was worried about the version of events that would be given.

The Duchess of Sussex’s team has said undue weight has been given to the biography and to the interview.

Meghan’s team, in court documents, said ANL “seeks to raise a proliferation of issues regarding matters such as an interview with a friend of the Claimant which appeared in ‘People’ magazine shortly before the Defendant’s articles, and the Claimant’s alleged cooperation with the authors of Finding Freedom - an unauthorised biography of the Claimant and her husband which was published nearly one and a half years after those articles. The Defendant has (no doubt with an eye to the public gallery) massively overstated the relevance of those publications”.

Papers filed to the court added: “Worse still, it has misleadingly claimed that the Claimant has made significant admissions regarding her alleged cooperation with the authors when she has not, and has placed on the record a number of allegations about Finding Freedom which are plainly false and were pleaded speculatively, such as that she and her husband met with the authors and had discussions with them for the purposes of the Book (they did no such thing); or that she and her friends embarked on a ‘media strategy’ to get personal information about her into the public domain because the Book’s publication date was postponed (it was not postponed until much later).

“It has deliberately misdescribed passages in the Book in order to bolster its case that the Claimant was the source for them. Most shocking of all, as regards the only passage in the Book that actually mentions the Letter, it has claimed that this information can only have come from the Claimant, when it knows full well that the authors must have simply lifted it from the Defendant’s own articles of one and a half years earlier (as confirmed by one of the authors himself).”

Read more: Why is Meghan Markle suing the Mail on Sunday?

In their response, ANL has said the matter is “wholly unsuitable” for a summary judgement.

Antony White, of the ANL team, said in written submissions there was “uncertainty as to a number of significant factual matters which can, and should, be investigated at trial when the court will have the full picture in terms of disclosure and evidence”.

He added: “This is particularly so when the claimant’s case in respect of certain important factual issues has shifted, (including) in relation to the circumstances in which the letter was written and the extent to which she had disclosed information about the letter with a view to publication.

“There are now on the record a number of inconsistent statements made by her that she will need to explain.”

It’s thought the judge will give his verdict on the summary judgement application at a later date.

The hearing continues.

Watch: Why is Meghan Markle suing the Mail On Sunday?