A US judge has dismissed a defamation case brought against Meghan Markle by her half-sister Samantha.
Samantha Markle was suing the Duchess of Sussex over comments she made in her Netflix documentary with Prince Harry, and the bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey three years ago.
Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell found comments made by Meghan were either opinions, substantially true, or did not plausibly defame her half-sister Samantha.
The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning she won’t be able to refile against her sibling.
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Samantha had taken issue with Meghan claiming she changed her surname back to Markle when the Duchess began dating Prince Harry.
Judge Honeywell said: “The court has taken notice of the fact that [Samantha] used the surname Rasmussen in September 2016 and Markle two months later, soon after [Meghan’s] royal relationship was first reported.
“Therefore, the gist of the statement – that [Samantha] switched to her family name a short time after it was reported [Meghan] was involved with Prince Harry – is true.”
The lawsuit also brought light on Meghan claiming to Oprah she was an “only child” growing up, saying she “wished” she had siblings.
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Judge Honeywell said this was Meghan’s opinion of the relationship in the ruling. She added Samantha had failed to identify any statements that could support a claim for defamation.
This was Samantha MArkle’s third try at amending her complaint against the former TV star. She first sought legal advice in March 2022, alleging the duchess defamed her by giving information to an unauthorized biography by Omid Scobie, Finding Freedom, and discussing their relationship with Opra on TV.
The previous case was thrown out by the same judge who found Meghan couldn’t be liable for the book as she had not published it.
However, it did come out in a different court hearing where Meghan and Harry did pass on information to the authors for the biography, previously denying they had any link to it. Their former press secretary’s emails were filed as evidence in a case between the 42-year-old and Associated Newspapers after it published a letter she sent to her father.
She won her privacy case against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday, and then Associated Newspapers legal team sought to overturn this judgment.
A spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex previously said they “did not contribute” to the biography, however, in court evidence, Jason Knauf, their communications secretary, said it was “discussed on a routine basis”. Knauf added it was “discussed directly with the duchess multiple times in person and over email”.
He planned a meeting with the authors to provide information for them to include in the book, and Meghan gave him briefing points to bring up in the meeting.
Meghan had always claimed she did not cooperate with the Finding Freedom authors but then remembered her ‘briefing notes’ to one of her aides.
She then apologized to the court for making a misleading statement about her part in the book, accepting her aide provided information with her knowledge, but said the “extent of the information he shared is unknown to me”.
“When I approved the passage… I did not have the benefit of seeing these emails and I apologize to the court for the fact that I had not remembered these exchanges at the time,” she said.
“I had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or the court.”
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