Mail on Sunday publishers to pay ?financial remedies? to Duchess of Sussex

Publishers of the Mail on Sunday have agreed to pay "financial remedies" to the Duchess of Sussex, three years after she began a protracted privacy battle over a handwritten letter to her estranged father.

On Sunday, the newspaper printed a statement at the bottom of its front page telling its readers that the duchess had won her legal case for copyright infringement against Associated Newspapers for articles published in the Mail on Sunday and posted on Mail Online.

On page three it ran a 64-word news story stating it had infringed copyright and that "financial remedies have been agreed." The story was also published on the Mail Online website at 11.58pm on Christmas Day with links to judgments made by courts.

The duchess sued Associated Newspapers over five articles reproducing extracts from a "personal and private" letter to Thomas Markle in August 2018. She won her case earlier this year when the high court judge Lord Justice Warby gave summary judgment in her favour without the need for a trial.

Associated Newspapers appealed on the grounds that the case should have gone to trial. That appeal was dismissed earlier this month by court of appeal judges Sir Geoffrey Vos, Dame Victoria Sharp and Lord Justice Bean.

They ruled that the duchess had a "reasonable expectation" of privacy regarding the contents of the letter. "Those contents were personal, private and not matters of legitimate public interest," Vos said.

Afterwards the duchess called for a reshaping of the tabloid industry and spoke of how she had been patient in the face of "deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks".