Meghan Markle scores legal victory against sister Samantha as judge dismisses defamation lawsuit

Samantha Markle’s defamation lawsuit against her sister Meghan has been dismissed because the Duchess of Sussex’s statements were ‘substantially true’.

Florida Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell said that the case should be dismissed because Samantha ‘failed to identify any statements that could support a claim for defamation’.

In a major victory for the Duchess, Judge Honeywell said Meghan’s comments in her Netflix series with Prince Harry or their interview with Oprah Winfrey were true

The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning that Samantha will not be able to refile it.

The judge’s decision spares Meghan, 42, from an embarrassing trial which was set to take place at the court in Tampa in November

A judge dismissed Samantha Markle’s defamation suit against her sister Meghan. Samantha was seeking damages in excess of $75,000

The judge said that Meghan Markle’s comments in her Netflix series with Prince Harry and in their interview with Oprah Winfrey were true
Samantha, 59, has been seeking at least $75,000 for defamation and defamation by implication for Meghan suggesting to Oprah that she grew up as an only child.

Meghan also said that Samantha only changed her name back to Markle after she began dating Harry.

According to Samantha, Meghan made similar claims in the Netflix series and the allegations subjected her to ‘humiliation, shame and hatred on a worldwide scale’.

In her 58-page ruling, Judge Honeywell said that Meghan’s statements could not be defamatory because they are ‘substantially true based on judicially noticed evidence’ or ‘not capable of being considered defamatory’.

Samantha had failed to ‘plausibly allege that they are defamatory in the first place’, the judge said.

The judge noted that Meghan’s comments about her childhood was her ‘merely opining’ that she did not have a close relationship with Samantha, her half sister with whom she shares a father.

Judge Honeywell said that Samatha’s claim that Meghan ‘implied that (she) was a liar and a fame-seeker’, was an ‘improper mischaracterization’ of what the Duchess said.

Turning to Meghan’s statement that Samatha changed her name from Rasmussen, her married name, back to Markle after the Duchess began dating Harry, the judge said that ‘the gist was true’.

She wrote: ‘That Plaintiff used one last name and then the name Markle soon after reports of Defendant’s relationship with Prince Harry were published is substantially true, based on the exhibits in the record, of which the Court has taken judicial notice’.

Among the statements in Samantha’s claim was one by Harry in the Netflix series in which he said: ‘Perhaps the most troubling part of this is the number of British journalists interacting with and amplifying the hate and the lies’.

But Judge Honeywell said: ‘That this statement was included in the complaint is perplexing and suggests haste, a misunderstanding of the law, or a lack of diligence on the part of plaintiff’s counsel.

‘It is unclear how this statement could be defamatory towards Plaintiff, as it does not reference her’.

In her conclusion, Judge Honeywell wrote: ‘Plaintiff’s claims will be dismissed with prejudice, as she has failed to identify any statements that could support a claim for defamation or defamation-by-implication by this point, her third try at amending her complaint, in either the book Finding Freedom, the Netflix series Harry & Meghan, or Defendant and her husband’s hour-long televised CBS Interview’.

The case was originally filed in March 2022 and in legal filings Samantha detailed at length how she was ‘very close’ to Meghan when they grew up in Los Angeles