Meghan Markle wants her lawsuit against the Associated Newspapers, the publisher of Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, to end. This week, the Duchess of Sussex's team of lawyers are going to court to seek a summary judgment but if that will not work, they will request for a delay in the trial.
According to Vanity Fair, the lawyers of Meghan Markle are confident that a judge will accept their plea. But if rejected, the prosecution will ask the High Court to move the trial which is supposed to begin on Jan. 11, 2021.
The Duchess of Sussex also wants a biography removed from the lawsuit. In September, a judge ruled that the book, Finding Freedom, which has been written by royal correspondents Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, may be included in the defense of the Associated Newspapers. However, time and again, Meghan and Prince Harry denied that they gave consent to the authors to write content that favors their narrative.
According to People, a summary judgment will keep details of the case private compared to a trial, which can become a public spectacle. A summary judgment will also avoid the need to take a stand, which means that Meghan won't have to testify in court.
The Duchess of Sussex will also be able to avoid seeing her father, Thomas Markle, face-to-face in the granting of a summary judgment. Thomas is a key witness for the defense since the subject of the privacy breach and copyright infringement is his letter from his daughter.
Meghan Markle accused Associated Newspapers of publishing her private letter to her dad. She believes that this breach caused her estrangement from Thomas, whom she hasn't seen or communicated in the past two years.
However, the lawsuit became more complicated within months of the pre-trial. Early this year, the judge dismissed the prosecution's argument that Associated Newspapers acted dishonestly and maliciously in printing Meghan's letter to Thomas. Then, a month later, the judge ruled in favor of the prosecution when the duchess asked that the identities of the five friends who defended her in a People interview be kept confidential.
A second blow to the prosecution came when the judge agreed, in September, to the inclusion of Finding Freedom in the trial. Lawyers of Associated Newspapers want to argue that the Sussex couple isn't protective about their privacy if they consented to have their life detailed in the book.
The lawsuit Meghan Markle filed against Associated Newspapers covers five articles in total, which were published in February 2019.
