Prince Harry, Meghan Markle get apology from Los Angeles paparazzi after lawsuit

Prince
Harry and wife Meghan Markle have forced a leading Los Angeles celebrity news
agency to turn over unauthorised photographs of their son after reaching an agreement
in an invasion-of-privacy case, the couple revealed on Thursday.

They filed the lawsuit in July after their 14-month-old son, Archie Harrison
Mountbatten-Windsor, was photographed with a drone while playing with his
maternal grandmother in their backyard, according to a report in the New York
Times.

The family
was staying in a Beverly Hills estate, owned by entertainment mogul Tyler
Perry.

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Since the culprits were unknown at the time, they did not name any defendants in the
lawsuit, after which, their lawyer, Michael J Kump, sent out fact-finding
subpoenas to three of the biggest celebrity news agencies in Los Angeles:
Backgrid, Splash News and X17.

X17 turned
out to be the guilty party and they have agreed to turn over the photographs to
the family, along with deleting any copies in its archives or databases.

They
have also agreed to never use any photos of the couple or their son acquired
through similar means “in any private residence or the surrounding private grounds.”

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Francois Navarre,
who along with his wife, Brandy, owns X17, has also agreed to issue an apology
and pay the family’s legal fees.

“We
apologize to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their son for the distress we
have caused. We were wrong to offer these photographs and commit to not doing
so again,” X17 said in a statement.

A statement
from Kump read, “All families have a right, protected by law, to feel safe and
secure at home.”

The couple,
who have resettled in Los Angeles following a dramatic split from the royal
family, sued under a ‘paparazzi law’, which was enacted in 1998 and last updated
in 2015.

The law
allows a person to be held accountable for intruding airspace photograph a
person on private property. It also covers wild driving by photographers while
chasing celebrities, something that also troubled Harry’s mother, Princess Diana.

The
lawsuit said that there were instances where media outlets flew
drones 20 feet above the house as often as thrice a day to photograph the
couple and their son in their residence, claiming some of which have been
published.

“Others
have flown helicopters above the backyard of the residence, as early as 5:30
a.m. and as late as 7:00 p.m., waking neighbors and their son, day after day.
And still others have even cut holes in the security fence itself to peer
through it,” the lawsuit said.

“Yeah,
sure, it’s always a question of private life versus public life,” Navarre told
the Los Angeles Times in 2007. “But you have an easy way to escape that. Get
out of Los Angeles.”