Thread by @BrianCathcart

You can read the full #Meghan judgment here: bailii.org/cgi-bin/format…) But here is a thread of extracts.

'The extensive new evidence seems to have been more directed at correcting allegations raised in the pleadings than at issues relevant to the question at hand, namely whether the judge should have granted summary judgment in this case.'

'The fact that the Duchess permitted her staff to meet with the authors [of the book Finding Freedom] … was of no consequence to what he [Lord Justice Warby, the judge in the lower court] had to decide.'

'In these circumstances, I would admit the new evidence as a matter of pure pragmatism… I do not think it is of any important relevance to the appeal, but I have nonetheless considered it.'

On the Duchess's correction and apology: 'This was, at best, an unfortunate lapse of memory on her part, but it does not seem to me to bear on the issues raised in the grounds of appeal, and it has been given no prominence in Associated Newspapers’ oral argument.'

'I accept that the People article made some serious allegations against Mr Markle ... but I do not accept that the judge misunderstood those allegations.'

'Whilst Mr Caldecott [counsel for the Mail] did not abandon the suggestion that there was no privacy in the letter, he did not press the point in oral argument. I think he was right.'

'As [Lord Justice Warby] said, it did not matter how the quotations got into the book; all that mattered was the timing and extent of publication: which was plainly not enough to defeat the claimant’s rights against the defendant... I agree.'

'...such a finding would be possible if there were any evidence that the claimant had published or intended to publish the contents of the Letter. But that evidence or anything approaching it was lacking. Indeed, it was not pleaded.'

‘It is plain from Mr Knauf’s evidence that [the Duchess] did not want the contents of the letter put into the public domain, even if she was prepared for the possibility that it might become public.’

'There is another reason why the defendant’s submission that the judge applied the wrong tests must be rejected. The judge did exactly what the parties had asked him to do.'

'It is true that the sub-headline “How Meghan’s media fightback led her Dad to reveal Letter he wanted to keep secret” suggested that the People article was the catalyst … But the remainder of the articles simply glorify the disclosure of the contents of the Letter...'

‘In my judgment the judge was right to decide that it was inappropriate and disproportionate to deploy the detailed content of the Letter in answer to the People Article.’

On copyright: ‘Nothing advanced by Mr Speck [counsel for the Mail] suggested that there was any triable issue that would look different after a trial.'

'Whilst it might have been proportionate to disclose and publish a very small part of the letter to rebut inaccuracies in the People article, it was not necessary to deploy half the contents of the letter as Associated Newspapers did.'

'The true purpose of the publication was, as the first four lines of the [MoS] articles said, to reveal for the first time ‘the full content of a sensational letter written by [the Duchess] to her estranged father shortly after her wedding’.

'The contents of the letter were private when it was written and when it was published, even if the claimant, it now appears, realised that her father might leak its contents to the media.' END THREAD.