Meghan Markle Scores Major Victory in Sister Samantha's Defamation Lawsuit

By Ashley Turner

In a ruling handed down by a Florida judge, Meghan Markle's half-sister Samantha Markle will not be able to sue both Meghan over claims that are made in the unauthorized biography Finding Freedom and her comments in the CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey. According to U.S. District Attorney Charlene Edwards Honeywell, Meghan "cannot be held accountable for the statements she made in a book that she did not publish," and her statement that she had grown up as an only child is not falsifiable as a protected opinion. Samantha filed the lawsuit in Florida in March 2022, seeking $75,000 in damages, reported the BBC. In the lawsuit, Samantha, 58, claims she and Meghan, 41, "were close during childhood" but drifted apart after Meghan began dating Prince Harry, who she married in May 2018. They are half-sisters as the daughters of Thomas Markle. Additionally, Samantha said she was criticized for saying their father should have attended the royal wedding of Meghan and Harry in a December 2018 interview, according to PEOPLE. 

Also, Samantha opposed the content of the chapter "A Problem Like Samantha" in Finding Freedom, which discussed Harry and Meghan's love story and their decision to step back from their roles in the royal family. In August 2021, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand wrote the book. Over 50 million people worldwide watched Oprah with Meghan and Harry on CBS in March 2021. As part of her lawsuit, Samantha claimed it was defamatory that the Duchess of Sussex said she grew up as an only child and that Meghan said Samantha "changed her last name back to Markle" when she began dating Prince Harry, which was defamatory. "As a reasonable listener would understand it, Defendant merely expresses an opinion about her childhood and her relationship with her half-siblings. Thus, the Court finds that Defendant's statement is not objectively verifiable or subject to empirical proof," Justice Honeywell wrote in dismissing the complaint.

A judge concluded the lawsuit by saying, "For the foregoing reasons, the Court grants the motion to dismiss. Plaintiff's claims based on Finding Freedom will be dismissed with prejudice, as Plaintiff cannot plausibly allege that Defendant published the book, and amendment of these claims would be futile. Plaintiff will be allowed one final opportunity to replead her claims related to Defendant's CBS interview and her claim for injurious falsehood." The Netflix series Harry & Meghan, which premiered in December 2022, introduced viewers to Samantha's daughter Ashleigh Hale, who is close to Meghan. In the limited series, Meghan said she wanted to invite Ashleigh to her royal wedding in 2018, but the palace told her she could not. "How do we explain that this half-sister isn't invited to the wedding, but that the half-sister's daughter is?" Meghan said. "With Ashleigh, the guidance at the time was to not have her come to our wedding. I was in the car with H. I had her on speakerphone and we talked her through what guidance we were given and why this assessment was made ... and that's painful. "I think I said I was hurt on some level, but I understood where it was coming from," Ashleigh said. "To know that it was because of my biological mother that this relationship that's so important to me was impacted in that way ... to feel like, because of her it was taken away, has been hard."

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