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.
Last month, Florida Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell said that the case should be dismissed because Samantha ‘failed to identify any statements that could support a claim for defamation.’
The comments were related to Prince Harry and Meghan’s infamous 2021 interview with American talk show host Oprah Winfrey.
The suit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning that it cannot simply be refiled.
However, Samantha’s team are seeking to overturn that decision, according to a new legal filing that was seen by Newsweek.
‘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 Duchess of Sussex, Motion to Dismiss entered by the Honorable Charlene Edwards Honeywell on March 12, 2024,’ the document reads.
A judge dismissed Samantha Markle’s defamation suit against her sister Meghan in March. Samantha was seeking damages in excess of $75,000
The decision in March saved the Sussexes, pictured here at the recent NAACP awards, from a trial in Florida that was set to begin in November 2024
Pictured: Meghan Markle at Samantha’s graduation in 2008. Samantha, 59, has accused her famous sister of defamation by implication for Meghan suggesting to Oprah that she grew up as an only child
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.
Turning to Meghan’s statement that Samantha changed her name from Rasmussen, her married name, back to Markle after the Duchess began dating Harry, the judge said that ‘the gist was true’.
She wrote: ‘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.’
Among the statements in Samantha’s claim was one by Harry in the Netflix series 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’.
But Judge Honeywell said: ‘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.
‘It is unclear how this statement could be defamatory towards Plaintiff, as it does not reference her’.
In her conclusion, Judge Honeywell wrote: ‘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 case was originally filed in March 2022 and in legal filings Samantha detailed at length how she was ‘very close’ to Meghan when they grew up in Los Angeles.
Samantha helped Meghan with her homework, took her shopping and had a ‘wonderful relationship’ with her, it was claimed.
But once Meghan began to become famous on the TV series Suits, she ‘no longer had time’ for Samantha and by 2016 they had stopped visiting each other, it was claimed.
The lawsuit claimed that once Meghan met Harry she became ‘hostile’ to Samantha as well as the rest of her family.
The ‘defining moment’ of Meghan’s ‘unwarranted hostility’ towards Meghan happened in 2017 when the Duchess allegedly ‘hung up the phone immediately’ upon hearing Samantha’s voice.
Samantha called back but ‘to this day Meghan has never returned Samantha’s phone call’, she claimed.
Since then Meghan has ‘belligerently attempted to malign Samantha and other family members’, the lawsuit states.
Meghan’s method is to ‘terminate friendships, rather than save them, and for her to become hostile’, the lawsuit claims.
Before her wedding in 2018, Meghan and Samantha’s father Thomas Sr suffered two heart attacks but instead of showing him ‘grace and compassion, she effectively terminated her relationship’.
Thomas Sr had been caught posing for photos with a paparazzi agency and Meghan has publicly claimed that she did not believe he was telling her the truth.
After that it is alleged that Meghan ‘started her smear campaign and ongoing deluge of distorted facts and stories, complete with fake quotes about and ‘by’ Samantha’.
The lawsuit even claims that Meghan has ‘encouraged hatred of Samantha through a bot network which caused great harm to Samantha’.
Samantha and Meghan have had a difficult relationship for years which exploded into public view after Meghan’s engagement to Harry was announced in 2017.
Samantha was quoted by journalists as saying that ‘The Queen would be appalled’ and called her a ‘ducha**’ on Twitter.
In her memoir, titled ‘The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister’, Samantha claimed that Meghan ordered their father to disown his children from his first marriage if he wanted an invitation to her wedding.
According to the book, Meghan told Thomas Sr to divorce himself from her and her brother Thomas by saying: ‘You don’t need them!’
Thomas Sr refused and supposedly said: ‘I love you all equally’ to which Meghan replied: ‘Why can’t you just comply?’