Meghan Markle (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images), Samantha Markle (via Sunrise Channel 7 Australia / YouTube screengrab).
A federal judge in Florida completely dismissed Samantha Markle's defamation lawsuit against Meghan Markle. The lawsuit was related to comments made on a CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021 and remarks on the Netflix series “Harry & Meghan.”
Senior U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell told the plaintiff on Tuesday that she saw no reason to do anything other than dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning the defamation and defamation by implication claims cannot be filed again. The reason for the resounding dismissal for failure to state a claim — with no leave to amend the lawsuit — was stated plainly.
“There is no reason to think that another amended complaint would be different,” Honeywell concluded, calling another attempt at suing “futile.”
Samantha Markle initially accused Meghan Markle of spouting “false and malicious” information in an unauthorized biography, “Finding Freedom,” and in her Oprah interview alongside Prince Harry, which the plaintiff alleged “subjected her to incomprehensible amounts of public scrutiny causing her mental health and well-being to deteriorate.”
In late March of last year, the judge ruled in Meghan Markle’s favor but allowed Samantha Markle to amend her lawsuit. By April, she revived the case and added new claims related to Netflix’s “Harry & Meghan.” The plaintiff accused Meghan Markle of “vilifying and embarrassing” her and, worse yet, of encouraging “hatred of Samantha through a bot network which has caused great harm to Samantha.”
She further alleged that the Duchess of Sussex made “disparaging, hurtful and false statements insinuating that Samantha is a stranger, a liar, and a person who was only a deceptive fame-seeking imposter with avaricious intentions toward Meghan.”
On Tuesday, Judge Honeywell was clear that, as far as the defamation claims linked to the Oprah interview and Netflix series are concerned, “each and every statement is non-actionable, either because it is a protected opinion, substantially true based on judicially noticed evidence, not capable of being considered defamatory, or because Plaintiff is precluded from meeting the actual malice standard.”
Those claims were thrown out with prejudice, and that was the case even though Samantha Markle claimed Meghan Markle’s “fan base,” including people near where she lives, turned on her and began viewing her as “an opportunist trying to cash in,” as Honeywell recounted it. The plaintiff said hate mail, stalking, anxiety, and damage to her reputation followed.
But because her defamation claims presented “a plethora of issues,” the judge found Samantha Markle failed to “plausibly state a claim for defamation or defamation by implication as to any of the statements.
The claim of defamation by implication, despite other issues, was destined to fail because the judge found that each of the statements the claim was based on are not legally valid.
The judge concluded that allowing the plaintiff to amend the lawsuit again would be pointless as Samantha Markle and her attorneys have already had multiple chances to improve their case, but failed to do so.
The judge stated that since the defamation claims in Count One are based on non-actionable statements, amending Count Two would not result in a valid claim. Therefore, further amendment would be pointless. None of the twenty allegedly defamatory statements presented by the Plaintiff survive legal challenge.
Meghan Markle's attorney, Michael J. Kump, expressed satisfaction with the court's decision to dismiss the case in a statement to Law&Crime.
Read the dismissal here.