‘Meghan can keep friends secret for ‘time being’ in tabloid lawsuit’

LONDON: Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, won a court battle to keep the names of five of her friends private for the time being as part of her legal action against a British tabloid which she accuses of invading her privacy. Meghan, wife of Queen Elizabeth’s grandson Prince Harry, is suing Associated Newspapers over articles in the Mail on Sunday that included parts of a handwritten letter she had sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018. As part of its defence, the paper argues that it published the letter in Feb. 2019 after five of Meghan’s friends gave anonymous interviews to the U.S. magazine People. The duchess argues that she did not authorise her friends to speak to People and that the Mail on Sunday only wanted to name them to exploit the legal dispute for commercial reasons. She says naming them would pose a threat to their “emotional and mental wellbeing”.