NEWS
Meghan Markle’s half-sister Samantha appeals judge’s decision to dismiss libel case against her over ‘disparaging hurtful and false’ comments she made during 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview
Meghan Markle’s half-sister Samantha is not giving up her libel case without a fight after her attorneys filed an appeal against a judge’s ruling that dismissed the lawsuit in March. Notice is hereby given that the Plaintiff, Samantha M. Markle, by and through her undersigned counsel, appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from the Order Granting Defendants, Meghan,The March decision spared Meghan, 42, from a trial which was set to take place at the court in Tampa in November.
Samantha, 59, has been seeking at least $75,000 for defamation and defamation by implication for Meghan suggesting to Oprah that she grew up as an only child.
Meghan also said that Samantha only changed her name back to Markle after she began dating Harry.
According to Samantha, Meghan made similar claims in the Netflix series and the allegations subjected her to ‘humiliation, shame and hatred on a worldwide scale’.
In her 58-page ruling, Judge Honeywell said that Meghan’s statements could not be defamatory because they are ‘substantially true based on judicially noticed evidence’ or ‘not capable of being considered defamatory’.
Samantha had failed to ‘plausibly allege that they are defamatory in the first place’, the judge said.
The judge noted that Meghan’s comments about her childhood was her ‘merely opining’ that she did not have a close relationship with Samantha, her half sister with whom she shares a father.
Judge Honeywell said that Samantha’s claim that Meghan ‘implied that (she) was a liar and a fame-seeker’, was an ‘improper mischaracterization’ of what the Duchess said