Defamation Lawsuit Against Meghan Markle by Half-Sister Dismissed by Judge – Meghan Markle has secured a legal triumph in a defamation lawsuit initiated by her half-sister, Samantha Markle. Judge Charlene Honeywell of the U.S. District Court has dismissed the case with prejudice. Samantha Markle alleged that Meghan defamed her in various interviews, including the CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey.
This decision was revealed in court documents filed on Tuesday and obtained by a news outlet. According to the filing by the Florida judge, the motion to dismiss the case was approved due to Samantha’s inability to provide evidence supporting her defamation claim. In the document, Honeywell stated that the accusations “imply” Samantha’s disagreement with Meghan’s “opinions rather than statements of fact.”
In a statement, Meghan’s attorney, Michael J Kump, said: “We are pleased with the court’s ruling dismissing the case.” Samantha, who shares a father, Thomas Markle, with Meghan, her half-sister, won’t have the opportunity to file the lawsuit again as it was dismissed with prejudice. The claimant had been pursuing $75,000 from the Duchess of Sussex for defamation.
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In her initial filing, Samantha asserted that the Duchess of Sussex made defamatory remarks during her interview with Winfrey by stating she “grew up as an only child.” She mentioned in the legal documents that she and Meghan “were close during childhood” but grew apart after Meghan began dating Prince Harry. She further contended that defamatory implications arose when Meghan stated during the interview that Samantha “changed her last name back to Markle” after she began dating Harry.
Additionally, Samantha alleged that she received negative publicity after expressing in a December 2018 interview that their father should have been present at Meghan and Harry’s royal wedding. Samantha also expressed dissatisfaction with the content of a chapter titled “A Problem Like Samantha” in the book Finding Freedom, authored by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand in August 2021.
This chapter focused on Harry and Meghan’s love story and their decision to step back from their roles as senior working royals. Honeywell determined in a March 2023 ruling that Meghan could not “be held liable for statements in a book that she did not publish” and that telling Oprah she “grew up as an only child” was not falsifiable because it was a protected opinion.
“As a reasonable listener would understand it, [the] Defendant merely expresses an opinion about her childhood and her relationship with her half-siblings.
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Thus, the Court finds that Defendant’s statement is not objectively verifiable or subject to empirical proof,” Honeywell wrote at the time. The judge concluded that Samantha’s claims based on Finding Freedom would be “dismissed with prejudice” and that she would be “allowed one final opportunity to replead her claims” related to the Winfrey interview “for injurious falsehood.”