Meghan Markle Wins in Half-Sister’s $75,000 Defamation Case

Tomás Mier
·1 min read
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Meghan Markle speaks at the 2024 SXSW Conference at Austin Convention Center. - Credit: Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images
Meghan Markle speaks at the 2024 SXSW Conference at Austin Convention Center. - Credit: Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images

Meghan Markle was granted a court win Tuesday in a defamation case filed by her half-sister Samantha Markle.

In a 58-page court ruling Monday, U.S. District Attorney Judge Charlene Honeywell dismissed the case after Samantha claimed that Markle had defamed her in interviews, including the one she did with Oprah in 2021, and Netflix’s Harry and Meghan the following year.

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Judge Honeywell said in the ruling that the case was dismissed because Samantha “failed to identify any statements that could support a claim for defamation or defamation-by-implication,” and that Samantha merely “disagrees” with Meghan’s “opinions rather than statements of fact.”

“We are pleased with the court’s ruling dismissing the case,” Meghan’s attorney, Michael J. Kump, tells Rolling Stone.

Samantha, who is Meghan’s half-sister through their father Thomas, won’t be able to refile the lawsuit after seeking $75,000 in damages from Markle.

According to People, Samantha originally claimed that the then Duchess of Sussex had made defamatory statements by saying she “grew up as an only child,” though the two “were close” during childhood. She also referred to the chapter “A Problem Like Samantha” from Finding Freedom, an unauthorized biography about Prince Harry and Meghan’s love story.

Last March, Meghan earned a court win when Judge Honeywell stated that she could not “be held liable for statements in a book that she did not publish.”

“As a reasonable listener would understand it, Defendant merely expresses an opinion about her childhood and her relationship with her half-siblings,” Honeywell wrote in the documents at the time. “Thus, the Court finds that Defendant’s statement is not objectively verifiable or subject to empirical proof.”

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