Meghan Markle, the wife of Prince Harry, scored a major victory in court on Tuesday when her half sister Samantha’s defamation lawsuit against her was dismissed by a judge.
Judge Gives Meghan Good News
Daily Mail reported that the Florida Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell, who was appointed by Barack Obama, ruled that the case should be dismissed because Samantha “failed to identify any statements that could support a claim for defamation.”
Judge Honeywell added that the statements that Meghan made in her Netflix series with Harry and in their interview with Oprah Winfrey were “substantially true.” She dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning Samantha will not be allowed to refile it.
This ruling spared Meghan, 42, from a potentially humiliating trial that was set to take place at the court in Tampa in November. Samantha, 59, had been seeking at least $75,000 for defamation and defamation by implication after Meghan suggested in her Oprah interview that she grew up as an only child. In this same interview, Meghan claimed that Samantha only changed her name back to Markle after she started dating Harry. The two half sisters share the same father, Thomas Markle.
Samantha claimed that Meghan’s comments led to “humiliation, shame and hatred on a worldwide scale,” but Judge Honeywell wasn’t having any of it. She said in her 58-page ruling that Meghan’s comments could not be seen as defamatory because they were “substantially true based on judicially noticed evidence” and “not capable of being considered defamatory.”
Related: Meghan Markle’s Half-Sister Says She Has ‘Actual Proof’ Of Meghan’s Lies
Judge Honeywell Doubles Down
Judge Honeywell also said that Samantha failed to “plausibly allege that they are defamatory in the first place,” and that Meghan was “merely opining” that she didn’t have a closer relationship with Samantha growing up. The judge added that Samantha’s claim that Meghan “implied that (she) was a liar and a fame-seeker” was an “improper mischaracterization” of the comments that were made.
The judge went on to say that Meghan’s claim that Samatha changed her name from Rasmussen, her married name, back to Markle after the Duchess began dating Harry was fair because “the gist was true.”
“That Plaintiff used one last name and then the name Markle soon after reports of Defendant’s relationship with Prince Harry were published is substantially true, based on the exhibits in the record, of which the Court has taken judicial notice,” the judge wrote.
Related: Meghan Markle Fires Back At Estranged Half-Sister Samantha Amidst Lawsuit
Samantha’s Issue With Harry’s Comments
Samantha particularly took issue with a comment Harry made in the Netflix documentary in which he said, “Perhaps the most troubling part of this is the number of British journalists interacting with and amplifying the hate and the lies.”
“That this statement was included in the complaint is perplexing and suggests haste, a misunderstanding of the law, or a lack of diligence on the part of plaintiff’s counsel,” the judge said in response. “It is unclear how this statement could be defamatory towards Plaintiff, as it does not reference her.”
Judge Honeywell concluded by writing that the “Plaintiff’s claims will be dismissed with prejudice, as she has 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, in either the book Finding Freedom, the Netflix series Harry & Meghan, or Defendant and her husband’s hour-long televised CBS Interview.”
The Daily Beast reported that this is the third time that Samantha tried to bring this suit. She previously chronicled her relationship with Meghan in her memoir “The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister Part 1,” which was published in 2021.
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