Meghan Markle (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images), Samantha Markle (via Sunrise Channel 7 Australia / YouTube screengrab).
A federal judge in Florida completely threw out a defamation lawsuit that Samantha Markle failed to fix the third time around in her quest to hold Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex and her half-sister, accountable for comments made on a CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021 and, more recently, for 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.”
And while there were other issues with the defamation by implication claim raised, that claim was “necessarily” doomed to fail since the judge just found “each of the statements on which the defamation claims were based are non-actionable,” the dismissal said.
Noting that Samantha Markle and her attorneys have had “several opportunities to amend” their case, adding “a number of deficient claims” and leaving old shortcomings uncured along the way, Honeywell concluded it “would be futile” to allow the plaintiff to amend the lawsuit again.
“Having found that Plaintiff’s defamation claims in Count One are based on non-actionable statements, there is no reason to believe amendment of Count Two would lead to a viable claim either,” the judge said. “Therefore, any further amendment would be futile. Of the nearly twenty allegedly defamatory statements Plaintiff has put forward and briefed, not even one survives a Rule 12(b)(6) challenge. Instead, all of the statements Plaintiff seeks to hold Defendant liable for are non-actionable under Florida law and the First Amendment.”
In a statement to Law&Crime on the outcome, Meghan Markle attorney Michael J. Kump said, “We are pleased with the Court’s ruling dismissing the case.”
Read the dismissal here.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
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