Samantha is seeking $75,000 (£57,000) in damages
After the 2021 airing of Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, Samantha Markle, Meghan’s half-sister, sued the Duchess for defamation.
Thomas Markle’s eldest daughter claims some of Meghan’s childhood memories during the interview, particularly her assertion that she “grew up as an only child,” were fabricated.
The Duchess’s US legal team filed papers this week asking a Florida judge to dismiss the case, arguing that Meghan’s claim about her upbringing cannot be true since it is a “textbook example of a subjective statement about how a person feels about her childhood”.
The documents read: “Plaintiff [Samantha] first asserts that she can disprove that Meghan ‘grew up as an only child’.
“But this perception is inherently unfalsifiable. It is hard to imagine a more personal and subjective feeling than how one views their own childhood.”
They added: “Moreover, Plaintiff’s opposition completely ignores the context of the statement, where Ms Winfrey asked Meghan about her ‘relationship’ with Plaintiff (to whom Ms Winfrey referred as her ‘half-sister on her father’s side’).
“Meghan’s response to that question that she ‘grew up as an only child’ was obviously not meant to be a statement of objective fact that she had no genetic siblings or half-siblings.
“Rather, it was a textbook example of a subjective statement about how a person feels about her childhood.”
Samantha claims that the Sussexes’ Oprah Winfrey interview and Finding Freedom biography caused her to experience “humiliation, shame and hatred on a worldwide scale,” for which she is suing for $75,000 (£57,000) in damages.
As per Hello magazine, the Duchess’ legal team has also maintained that she cannot be sued over what was written on Finding Freedom because she did not write it.
“Meghan did not make the statements; she cannot be liable for them,” Meghan’s lawyers said in the recently submitted paperwork. “It is that simple.”