Скачать или смотреть Media lawyer Mark Stephens QC on the ruling to keep five of Meghan’s friends identities anonymous

(5 Aug 2020) MEDIA LAWYER MARK STEPHENS QC ON THE RULING TO KEEP FIVE OF MEGHAN'S FRIENDS IDENTITIES ANONYMOUS
A British judge ruled Wednesday (5 AUGUST 2020) that the Duchess of Sussex can keep the names of five close friends secret while she brings a privacy invasion lawsuit against a British newspaper — but he chided both sides in the case for playing out their battle in the media as well as the courtroom.
High Court judge Mark Warby said "I have concluded that, for the time being at least, the court should grant the claimant the order that she seeks," protecting the anonymity of friends who defended Meghan in the pages of a U.S. magazine.
The former Meghan Markle is suing the publisher of the Mail on Sunday and the MailOnline website 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.  
Meghan, 39, is seeking damages from publisher Associated Newspapers Ltd. for alleged misuse of private information, copyright infringement and data protection breaches.  
The duchess asked the judge to prohibit publishing details of female friends who spoke anonymously to People magazine to condemn the alleged bullying she had received from the media. She argued that the friends were not parties to the case and had a "basic right to privacy."
The women's names are included in a confidential court document, but they have been identified in public only as A to E.
"What happened today was that the judge, Mr Justice Mark Warby, decided that Meghan's friends can remain under seal. Their identities not disclosed to the general public at the moment," media lawyer Mark Stephens QC explained, via video link Wednesday.
"Of course, they have witness evidence is going to be key to this case because part of it is that they are said to have curated an attack against Thomas Markle through the pages of People magazine. But they were confidential sources at People magazine."
Associated Newspapers' attorney Antony White said during a court hearing last week that the friends were potential witnesses in the case, and keeping their names secret "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."  
The judge acknowledged he had to balance "the competing demands of confidentiality and open justice."
Warby ruled in favor of anonymity, saying it would serve justice by shielding Meghan's friends from the "glare of publicity" in the pretrial stage of the case.
"The key element here is, if Thomas Markle was the subject of an attack, he was then entitled to reply to that attack. If he was not part of an attack, then in those circumstances, he wasn't. So the judge has effectively delayed the decision about whether or not to name these witnesses who were known to the court and to the parties. They're just not known to the general public," Stephens added.
"Of course, we have a thing called the open justice principle. That is that what goes on in our courts is public and should be open to public scrutiny. And we've deviated from that for today. But I'm not sure that we will deviate from that at the trial."
No date has been set for the full trial, which is likely to be one of the highest-profile civil cases in the U.K. for years.
Associated Newspapers, which is contesting the duchess's privacy-infringement claim, says it was Meghan's friends who brought the letter into the public domain by describing it in the People article.

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