In response to allegations that the newspaper had “harassed, humiliated, manipulated and exploited” Thomas, Antony White, representing Associated Newspapers, argued that the Duchess had not had direct contact with her father since her wedding.
“In this context it appears that the claimant has seen fit to put these allegations on the record without having spoken to Mr Markle, verifying these allegations with him or obtaining his consent.”
“This is an allegation of seriously improper deliberate, i.e. intentional, conduct to the effect that the defendant’s motive was to seek to manufacture or stoke a family dispute for the sake of having a good story or stories to publish,” Antony said.
He further stated that such “complex tests of mental state” of the publisher are "irrelevant to the claim for misuse of private information", and asked the judge to strike out that allegation.
Responding to Harry’s claim that the newspaper had reported the letter “dishonestly” by cherry-picking excerpts, Antony said, “It is extremely common for the media to summarise or edit documents when reporting current events, and that is not a basis for an allegation of dishonesty”.
The defence also disputed the allegation of breaching Meghan’s copyright and privacy, stating that the existence of the letter was already public knowledge because Meghan’s friends had referred to it in an interview with People.
While the Duchess had denied knowledge of this interview, Associated Newspapers argued that she could not have been unaware of her friends giving such a high-profile interview about her. A decision will have to be made on whether Meghan had “reasonable expectation” that the contents of the letter would be private.