Meghan Markle just scored a major win in court. In 2022, the Duchess of Sussex was hit with a defamation lawsuit by none other than her vengeful older half sister Samantha Markle. The lawsuit came more than a year after Meghan’s first tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey. Apparently, Samantha feels that Meghan misrepresented her child and her relationship with her father and sister — something she now says prevented her from getting opportunities she'd hoped for. Now, two years later, a Florida judge has ruled in Meghan’s favor.
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The judge ruled that Samantha didn't provide concrete examples of defamation.
Page Six was able to get a copy of the court records, which state that Samantha Markle "failed to identify any statements that could support a claim for defamation or defamation-by-implication by this point, her third try at amending her complaint …"
The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning Samantha can’t level her claim again.
The judge cited multiple sources to prove that no defamation had happened.
Specifically, the judge noted that neither Meghan and Prince Harry’s docuseries, Meghan & Harry, nor Omid Scobie’s book, Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Family, show any examples of the defamation that Samantha is upset about. Additionally, the judge didn’t find any examples of defamation in the 2021 sit-down interview the couple did with Oprah Winfrey, either.
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The judge ruled that Meghan can speak about her life the way she wants to.
Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell of the Florida District Court found that Samantha provided "mischaracterizations of the [interview] transcript" and the judge decided that the statements made by Meghan and Harry about Samantha and her father Thomas Markle were "quintessential examples of opinion."
Samantha made it clear that she is unhappy with the Oprah interview.
When Samantha filed the lawsuit, she claimed that Meghan had made "false and malicious statements" during her interview with Oprah. She didn’t stop there either. Samantha also accused Meghan of falsely claiming to be "an only child" and lying about the last time they saw each other. She then claimed that Meghan publicly bashed their father Thomas Markle to create a "rags-to-royalty" narrative.
Meghan didn't lose much sleep over the lawsuit.
At the time the suit was filed, Meghan called the lawsuit "meritless."
"We do not [impanel] juries to rule on whether two people are 'close,' or whether one genuinely feels that they 'grew up as an only child,'" her legal response read. "Courts are not equipped to adjudicate the legitimacy of a person’s feelings about their childhood and relationships. Nor should they be."
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