U.K.’s Mail on Sunday Publishes Mea Culpa to Meghan Markle After Losing Court Battle

British newspaper Mail on Sunday published a front-page mea culpa to Meghan Markle after losing a court battle with the Duchess of Sussex earlier this year.

Stopping short of an apology, the brief statement — teased on the front page and printed in full on page 3 as well as online with the simple headline “The Duchess of Sussex” — acknowledged that the paper’s publisher, Associated Newspapers, had lost the privacy dispute brought forth by Markle.

“Following a hearing on 19-20 January 2021, and a further hearing on 5 May 2021, the Court has given judgment for The Duchess of Sussex on her claim for copyright infringement,” the statement read in part. “The Court found that Associated Newspapers infringed her copyright by publishing extracts of her handwritten letter to her father in The Mail on Sunday and in Mail Online. Financial remedies have been agreed.”

In March, a judge ordered the publisher to pay Markle 90 percent of her estimated $1.88 million in legal expenses.

The online post also linked out to the full judgments. Following the publication of the statement, the hashtag #MeghanMarkleWon was trending on Twitter.

This marks the culmination of a lawsuit that Markle filed three years ago.

In February, Britain’s High Court ruled that the publisher of The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline website unlawfully breached Markle’s privacy with five articles that reproduced a large chunk of a handwritten letter she sent her father, Thomas Markle, after she married Prince Harry in 2018.

An appeal by the publisher was dismissed Dec. 2. At the time, senior appeals judge Geoffrey Vos said that “the Duchess had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the letter. Those contents were personal, private and not matters of legitimate public interest.”

In a statement, Meghan called the ruling “a victory not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt scared to stand up for what’s right.”

“What matters most is that we are now collectively brave enough to reshape a tabloid industry that conditions people to be cruel, and profits from the lies and pain that they create,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.