Samantha, Meghan’s half-sister, claimed the duchess made “clearly false and malicious statements” about her, but a magistrate in Florida disagreed.
The Duchess of Sussex has prevailed in a defamation suit filed by her half-sister Samantha Markle.
After her explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021, Meghan was accused of making “clearly false and malicious statements” to a “global audience.”
Samantha Markle claimed Meghan falsely claimed she was an only child during the encounter.
Thursday, a judge in Florida dismissed the lawsuit, stating that the duchess was expressing “an opinion about her childhood and her relationship with her half-sibling” and that an opinion cannot be proven inaccurate.
US District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell wrote in a court order, “As a reasonable listener would perceive it, the defendant merely conveys an opinion regarding her childhood and her relationship with her half-siblings.
“Therefore, the court concludes that the defendant’s statement is neither objectively verifiable nor susceptible to empirical proof… The plaintiff cannot plausibly refute the defendant’s opinion regarding her childhood.”
Samantha Markle filed a defamation lawsuit against her younger sister in March 2022, alleging that the duchess had defamed her by providing “false information” to an unofficial biography titled Finding Freedom.
She listed several statements from the book with which she disagreed, including that the half-sisters scarcely knew each other as children and that Samantha had been “well compensated” for an unflattering tabloid article.
Judge Honeywell ruled that the duchess was not responsible for the book’s content because she did not promote it.
