Samantha Markle’s lawsuit against Meghan set to fail as judge says arguments are 'beside the point'

The lawsuit centred on comments made by Meghan in her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey and in the 2022 Netflix series Harry & Meghan.

Samantha alleged she was defamed by the Duchess, after noting that Meghan described herself as an only child.

The 60-year-old also claimed that Meghan linked her half-sister to an online hate campaign.

Samantha's attorneys argued that the “cumulative effect” of the remarks amounted to defamation by implication, damaging her reputation and prompting harassment and death threats.

“The whole purpose was to destroy Samantha Markle,” her lawyer Peter Ticktin told the three-judge panel. “They knew to use words like ‘disinformation’ or ‘racist troll’. It caused death threats. It caused her sister to be hated in the community.”

Mr Ticktin also told the judges: “If somebody had a manual on how you hurt somebody and escape the liability of having a claim against you for defamation, this is the case. It’s a smorgasbord of every single kind of way of avoiding liability, all mixed in one. And the whole purpose was to actually destroy Samantha Markle.”

Meghan’s lawyers have consistently maintained that the contested remarks were either protected opinions, substantially true, or otherwise not capable of being defamatory. Attorney Michael Kump told the panel his client was being sued “solely on a convoluted theory of vicarious liability” and urged the court to uphold the lower ruling.

Mr Kump also defended the Netflix appearance of social media analyst Christopher Bouzy, who suggested Samantha had spread disinformation about Meghan.

He told judges there was no evidence Meghan should have doubted Mr Bouzy’s statements, adding that the series included Samantha’s response that her X (Twitter) account had been hacked, resulting in “imposter accounts” created by third parties.

Chief US Circuit Judge William Pryor pressed Mr Ticktin on whether his appeal addressed the original ruling by Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell, who had found the statements to be non-actionable.

“It seems to me that everything you argue about is beside the point,” Mr Pryor said. “Because when the district court rules… you have to knock down in your opening brief every basis for the district court’s ruling, and you didn’t even touch this.”

Quoting further, Mr Pryor added: “The district court has worked hard on their decision and explained all of their rulings. If you haven’t attacked one of the alternative grounds of the district court’s ruling, I don’t see how we can fault the district court for having reached the verdict that it did.”

Another judge on the panel, Nancy Abudu, also raised concerns about the procedural flaws in the appeal. Mr Ticktin conceded: “If we would’ve thought this thing through a little better in the first place instead of chasing after all the different aspects of the case — we fell into the trap. We played into their hands of what it was that was the basis of this defamation.”

Meghan, in her 2021 interview with Ms Winfrey, had said: “I think it’d be very hard to tell all when you don’t know me. And I mean, this is a very different situation than my dad, right?

“When you talk about betrayal, betrayal comes from someone that you have a relationship with, right? 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.”

Samantha’s lawyers had countered in filings that she was close to Meghan while growing up, despite their 17-year age difference.

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One court document read: “Mrs. Markle was more than a model to follow, but she was also the one who regularly drove the duchess to school and helped her with homework, went on shopping trips to the local mall, and overall had a wonderful relationship with her younger sister.”

Judge Honeywell’s dismissal last year described the statements as non-actionable “either because it is a protected opinion, substantially true based on judicially noticed evidence, not capable of being considered defamatory, or because plaintiff is precluded from meeting the actual malice standard.”

The panel of three judges — Mr Pryor, Ms Abudu and Elizabeth Branch — did not deliver a verdict on Tuesday, but signalled scepticism about the appeal. Their decision will be issued at a later date.

Samantha Markle, who published a memoir in 2021 titled The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister Part 1, has been pursuing her claims since 2022. The appeal is widely seen as her final legal avenue after multiple setbacks in the case.