Meghan Markle Attempting to Shield Friends in Libel Lawsuit

Meghan Markle doesn’t want to drag her friends into her business. That’s admirable. Also, probably trying to protect her secrets.

Markle has sued the publisher of the Mail for libel based on some letters her friends wrote to her father. Part of her request in the suit was to suppress the identity of these friends.

Lawyers for Meghan Markle asked a judge at a London court on Wednesday to keep the names of five of her friends out of the public domain as she wages a privacy-infringement battle against a British newspaper.

[…]

The Duchess of Sussex is suing the publisher of the Mail on Sunday newspaper and the MailOnline website at Britain’s High Court over five articles that published portions of a handwritten letter she wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, after her marriage to Prince Harry in 2018.

Her friends had written to her father out of worries for her well-being.

The concerns had to do with the Duchess of Sussex’s “welfare, specifically as she was pregnant, unprotected by the Institution, and prohibited from defending herself.

What is the Mail saying?

…the Mail’s lawyer, Antony White, said granting anonymity would undermine the “vitally important open justice principle.”

“The friends are important potential witnesses on a key issue,” White said in a written argument. He said removing their names “would be a heavy curtailment of the media’s and the defendant’s entitlement to report this case and the public’s right to know about it.”

Associated Newspapers said it was Meghan’s friends who brought the letter to Thomas Markle into the public domain by describing it in the People article. It argues that details of the letter in that article must have come “directly or indirectly” from the duchess.

What’s the real play here for Markle? Of course, she wants to protect her friends. Yet, they spoke to PEOPLE. Maybe she’s trying to stop her friends from saying anything more.

Also, Markle has friends? Based on all the gossip out there, she kinda uses people for her own gain.