Samantha filed her lawsuit against Meghan Markle in March 2022. Samantha claimed that the Duchess and her husband Harry were involved in a well-publicized sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey during which they engaged in “defamation and injurious falsehoods” as well as “malicious lies” Samantha also claimed that the Duchess was involved in a number of other alleged incidents.
Also, Samantha asserts that a “large section” of the populace in her hometown of Windsor, England, dislikes the senior Markle, alleging that Meghan’s Floridian audience “got upset” with her half-sister.
Samantha claimed that as the Duchess’ fame grew and she finally met Prince Harry, the pair’s relationship “unraveled,” and on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell granted Meghan’s petition to dismiss.
Three of the problems Samantha brought up in the lawsuit were related to Meghan’s statements in the Oprah interview from 2021 that she was “an only child,” she had only interacted with her half-sister “a handful of times,” and Samantha had changed her last name to Markle after Meghan and Prince Harry began dating in order to “cash in on her newfound fame.”
Regarding Meghan’s assertion to Oprah that she was an “only child,” the judgment states that “a reasonable listener would not believe that Defendant was claiming that she has no half-siblings, that Plaintiff does not truly exist, or that Plaintiff is not connected to her.”
The defendant only conveys her perspective about her upbringing and her relationships with her half-siblings, as a reasonable listener would deduce. The Court concludes that the Defendant’s claim cannot be objectively verified or supported by evidence. The claim is shielded from a defamation case since it cannot be “shown to be untrue.”
The interaction looks like this. Samantha Markle, your half-sister from your father’s side, has allegedly written a book about you, according to Oprah Winfrey. What kind of connection do you have to her?
“I believe it would be extremely difficult to convey everything when you don’t know me,” says Meghan Markle. And… you do realize that this is a totally different circumstance from my dad’s?
When you speak about betrayal, you usually mean treachery by a person with whom you have a connection. Right? I don’t feel at ease discussing folks I really don’t know.
Yet everyone who grew up with me knows that I was an only kid growing up, and I often wished I had siblings. I would have cherished having siblings.
The court ultimately denied the claim without prejudice and with leave to amend. Samantha claimed in her lawsuit that Meghan told Oprah the two had only met “a handful of times,” but the court wrote that it could not verify that allegation: “This statement is nowhere to be found in the interview transcript.”
She changed her last name back to Markle only when I started dating Harry, and I think she was in her early 50s at the time. Samantha’s claim that Meghan did so for fame was similarly rejected “because it is explicitly contradicted by the transcript,” according to the transcript, which noted Samantha’s claims were false. I believe that tells it all. Samantha had 14 days from the date of the ruling to submit an amended lawsuit, but the allegations were rejected without prejudice.
Another time, Samantha claims her half-sister “contributed inaccurate material” to the writers of Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Creation of a Modern Royal Family, citing Chapter 12’s “A Trouble Like Samantha” in particular.
The court sided with Meghan, however, writing in the decision that “Defendant maintains that the claims based on Discovering Freedom must fail since she did not publish the book.” The Court concurs.
The claims were dismissed without prejudice because “the Court finds that Plaintiff’s claims related to Finding Freedom are due to be dismissed because I a defendant must publish a defamatory statement for it to be actionable and (ii) it is undisputed that Defendant did not publish Finding Freedom.” Samantha’s motion for attorneys’ fees and expenses under the anti-SLAPP Act was rejected by the court as premature and without prejudice.