Judge sides with Meghan Markle in Samantha Markle’s defamation lawsuit

A judge sided with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, as she and her half-sister Samantha Markle’s defamation legal case went to court in Florida on Wednesday, February 15.

The former Suits actress is being sued for defamation by her estranged sibling, who is seeking damages over the “malicious lies” she alleged were told about her during an interview Meghan and her husband Prince Harry gave to Oprah Winfrey in 2021 after stepping down from royal duties the year before.

She’s also seeking US$75,000 ($120,000) in damages for comments made about her in the biography Finding Freedom.

And in a Zoom court appearance this week, Samantha claimed that the “lies” were used to “cover up” the “made-up narrative that her sister went “from rags to riches”.

She has also claimed the words led to her facing “humiliation, shame and hatred on a worldwide scale”.

Samantha’s lawyer Peter Ticktin is quoted by the Daily Telegraph newspaper as saying of Meghan’s alleged web of lies: “She got caught. She was lying about her education, that she was getting all these scholarships. Her father paid for her education for goodness’ sake, and she got caught with this lie.

“Why else is she putting her sister down? Why else is she putting her father down?

“Why else is she denying her family who has done nothing but good to her all her life? She never had a problem with them at all.”

He added that Meghan didn’t think of the consequences of her comments and claimed it led to his client receiving death threats and dealing with a stalker.

Ticktin added how “this would put an innocent person into the fray where all of a sudden she has hundreds of threats on her life coming at her, a stalker she had to deal with”.

Meghan’s legal team wants the case to be thrown out, and her lawyer Michael Kump is adamant that the statements made about Samantha cannot be deemed “defamatory” under Florida law and argued the right to freedom of expression.

Samantha Markle is seeking damages over the “malicious lies” she alleged were told about her during an interview Meghan and her husband Prince Harry gave to Oprah Winfrey in 2021. Photo / Supplied

Hitting back at Meghan’s sister’s lawyer, he said his comments were “quite frankly offensive to my client”.

He said: “Don’t make a federal case out of it.”

The attorney went on: “Not every perceived slight ought to be litigated and that’s true here. Plaintiff [Samantha] is taking issue with Meghan’s own impressions of her own childhood growing up but that’s not a proper subject matter for a court of law.”

He insisted the “statements at issue here are not defamatory as a matter of law”, and added that “the right to voice opinions and even criticise” is guaranteed by the US First Amendment.

The judge admitted she was “struggling” to see how the allegedly damaging words penned by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand in Finding Freedom could be seen as coming from Meghan.

Meghan and her husband Harry’s request to have the court case dismissed was rejected.

However, the couple may have to answer questions from Samantha’s legal team, separately, in a deposition should the case reach the next stage.