Meghan Markle wins crunch legal case in exact same week Harry starts his own court battle

Meghan Markle and her half-sister Samantha Markle

Meghan Markle has successfully had her half-sister's defamation case dismissed.

PA/GB News
George McMillan

By George McMillan


Published: 31/03/2023

- 14:21

Samantha Markle brought a defamation case against Meghan over comments she made to Oprah about her family

Meghan Markle has had her sister’s defamation case against her dropped by a US court.

Samantha Markle accused Meghan of spreading “demonstrably false and malicious lies” to a “worldwide audience” during her and Prince Harry’s explosive interview with Oprah in 2021.


But a Florida judge that Meghan’s comments were “not capable of being proved false" and pure opinion, a decision which resulted in the case being dismissed.

Samantha’s lawyer, Peter Ticktin, claimed Meghan had used the book Finding Freedom written by Omid Scobie to "affirm this false narrative that she supposedly lived this rags to riches thing".

Samantha Markle

Samantha Markle accused Meghan of spreading “demonstrably false and malicious lies”.

GB News

"She got caught. She was lying about her education, that she was getting all these scholarships. Her father paid for her education for goodness sakes, and she got caught with this lie.

"Why else is she putting her sister down? Why else is she putting her father down?

"Why else is she denying her family who has done nothing but good to her all her life? She never had a problem with them at all."

"She's denying them to cover up that she made up this narrative that she went from rags to riches which is nonsense, probably not even realising the harm she would do to her sister.

"Probably never realising this would put an innocent person into the fray where all of a sudden she has hundreds of threats on her life coming at her, a stalker she had to deal with."

Meghan’s lawyer said his comments were “inappropriate" and "quite frankly offensive to my client".

But US District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell found the duchess could not be liable for the contents of the book because she did not publish it.

Dismissing the case, Judge Honeywell wrote: "As a reasonable listener would understand it, Defendant merely expresses an opinion about her childhood and her relationship with her half-siblings.

Meghan Markle

Meghan Markle has had her sister’s defamation case against her dropped by a US court.

PA

"Thus, the Court finds that Defendant’s statement is not objectively verifiable or subject to empirical proof.... Plaintiff cannot plausibly disprove Defendant’s opinion of her own childhood."

Prince Harry is currently embroiled in a privacy case against Associated Newspapers (ANL).

His return to the UK comes just weeks before King Charles's Coronation which will take place on May 6.

Meghan and Harry are yet to confirm if they will be in attendance.

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