LOS ANGELES – The issue of unauthorized photos in the backyard of Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor has been resolved. And the legal finding, revealed by his parents Prince Harry and Meghan on Thursday, left one of Hollywood’s biggest paparazzi agencies with a tail between its legs.
In July, the couple sued for a breach of privacy over photos taken with a drone and zoom cameras of 14-month-old Archie while he was playing with his maternal grandmother in their backyard. At the time, the family was staying on a secluded property in Beverly Hills owned by entertainment mogul Tyler Perry. They did not mention the names of the defendants in the case because they did not know who they were.
The deposit allowed for their attorney, Michael J. Komb, sending fact-finding subpoenas to the top three famous news agencies in Los Angeles: Backgrid, Splash News, and X17.
The culprit turned out to be X17, which, according to a settlement agreement filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, agreed to hand over the photos to the family, destroy any copies in their archives or databases, and not to go through any other photos of the couple or their son by similar means. In any private residence or in the surrounding private places. “
The X17 will also pay a portion of the family’s legal fees, according to Mr. Kump.
In blunt terms, Harry and Meghan, who frequently clashed with the British media over privacy concerns, sent a stark message to US paparazzi agencies of the case: Come after us, and we’ll catch you.
“We apologize to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their son for the distress we have caused,” X17 said in a statement. “We were wrong to show these photos and made an obligation not to do so again.”
“All families have the right, protected by law, to feel safe and secure at home,” Mr. Combe said in a statement.
The couple who resettled in California this year after A. Dramatic Skating From Windsor House, which has been sued under the so-called Photographers Act, under which a person can be held civic liability for intruding into airspace to take pictures of a person on private property. The law was enacted in 1998 and was last updated in 2015. It also covers ground driving by celebrity photographers while chasing after their subjects – the kind of behavior that upset Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, who died in 1997 after her car crashed while trying to escape Photographers. On motorcycles.
Harry and Meghan – beloved by millions of fans, who see themselves as daring and fashionable, and disparaged by an equally violent faction that sees their actions dismissing tradition as inappropriate – took an unusually hard-line approach with the news media. In April, they complained about an “economy of clicks and distortion” and coverage that was “distorted, false and invasive beyond reason.” They told four prominent British publishers on the tabloid that they would You no longer deal with them. Megan has it He filed a lawsuit against the publisher of The Mail on Sunday, Sister newspaper of the Daily Mail, for publishing a private letter that she sent to her estranged father in 2018. Another suit, Which targets Splash News, includes photos taken of Megan and Archie this year in Vancouver, British Columbia.
In the case of X17, Harry and Megan discovered that someone had been shopping their son’s photos to outlets around the world and claimed they were taken in public, according to the complaint, which indicated Archie had not been in public since the family’s arrival. In Southern California. The photos were published in the German magazine Bunte. The couple’s lawyers were able to move quickly enough to prevent their deployment in the US and Britain.
“Some photographers and the media have flown drones just 20 feet above the house, an average of three times a day, to get pictures of the couple and their young son in their own residence (some have been sold and published),” the lawsuit said. “Others have moved helicopters over the backyard of the house, early from 5:30 in the morning until 7:00 in the evening, to wake up the neighbors and their son, day in and day out. Still others have cut holes in the security fence itself to look through “.
Owned by François Navarre and his wife Brandy, X17 describes itself on its website as “Hollywood’s leading celebrity photography agency, serving tens of thousands of media outlets around the world with high-quality photos and videos.” Variety described the operation as “a veritable” spider web of photographers and undercover informants “. In 2003, Mr. Navarre had to pay Jennifer Aniston $ 550,000 Settlement of privacy violation claim Click pictures of her sunbathing topless in her backyard.
“Yes, of course, it is always a matter of private versus public life,” Mr. Navarre He told The Los Angeles Times in 2007. “But you have an easy way to escape from that. Get out of Los Angeles.”
In August, Harry and Meghan did just that, moving from Mr. Perry’s home in Beverly Hills to a home in Montecito, a confined ocean area about an hour northwest of Malibu. The couple bought the seven-acre property for $ 14.7 million. It is fenced and covered with trees.
