Meghan Markle’s legal team has denied that their client lied to Oprah Winfrey about being an “only child” following half-sister Samantha Markle’s lawsuit.The lawsuit seeks damages of $75,000 for claims made in the Finding Freedom biography and in a tell-all Oprah interview last March.
Samantha claimed the two share a father, Thomas Markle, even though Meghan insisted to Oprah that she grew up as an “only child.” Previously, Meghan revealed in a British court case that her communications secretary consulted with the book’s writers at her request.
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In a new document, Meghan’s legal team argued that whether or not a staff member briefed the biographers is irrelevant, saying, “Meghan did not make the statements; she cannot be liable for them. It is that simple.” In legal paperwork submitted to a Florida court this week, Meghan’s legal team stated, via Hello!, “Plaintiff [Samantha] first asserts that she can disprove that Meghan’ grew up as an only child.’
“But this perception is inherently unfalsifiable. It is hard to imagine a more personal and subjective feeling than how one views their own childhood.”According to the brief, “Moreover, Plaintiff’s opposition completely ignores the context of the statement, where Ms. Winfrey asked Meghan about her’ relationship’ with Plaintiff (to whom Ms. Winfrey referred as her ‘half-sister on her father’s side’).”
“Meghan’s response to that question that she ‘grew up as an only child’ was obviously not meant to be a statement of objective fact that she had no genetic siblings or half-siblings. Rather, it was a textbook example of a subjective statement about how a person feels about her childhood.”
Samantha had claimed Meghan’s comment “hurt sales of her autobiography, prevented her from getting jobs, and caused emotional and mental distress.”She said the remarks were meant to portray her as “a prevaricator who was attempting to cash in on the fact that her barely known half-sister married into the royal family. By publishing these false facts, she was making it apparent that her older sister was an opportunist of the worst kind.”
Samantha has alleged that Meghan led a “premeditated campaign to destroy” her credibility by fabricating things about her childhood to provoke her supporters against her.Yet, Meghan has repeatedly claimed she barely knows her half-sister and hasn’t spoken to her for years.
As she explained about Samantha in a clip released before her Oprah interview, “I don’t feel comfortable talking about people that I really don’t know but I grew up as an only child, which everyone who grew up around me knows, and I wished I had siblings, I would have loved to have had siblings… The last time I saw her [Samantha] must have been at least 18 or 19 years ago, and then before that, 10 years before that.” Meghan added, “She changed her last name back to Markle, she was in her early 50s at that time, only when I started dating Harry, so I think that says enough.”
