Samantha’s lawyers are set to contest a previous verdict on defamation that might lead to Meghan Markle confronting her half-sister in court again.
During an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Megan said she grew up almost as an only child, only saying that Samantha changed her surname back to Markle when Megan started dating Prince Harry. Her legal team contends that Meghan’s comments were “riotous, malicious and nonfactual,” while Meghan managed to win the first lawsuit in Florida. According to Express UK, however, Samantha has taken the case before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal after filing its original briefs by July.
The most recent move is documented in a mention submitted to Newsweek, which reads: “These combined attributions and utterances ultimately led [Meghan] toward an ultimate connotation not factored by the trial court.” This will be Samantha’s lawyers’ argument; that the judge considered each statement made by Meghan in isolation without taking into account their overall effect.
In Meghan and Harry’s Netflix documentary series, she said: “I was with my mom during the week and with my dad on the weekends. And my dad lived alone, he had two adult children who had moved out of his house. I don’t remember seeing her [Samantha] when I was a kid at my dad’s house, if and when they would come around.”
Charlene Edwards Honeywell J., initially dismissed the complaint indicating that it was impossible for [Meghan] so far as one can tell from what she has written about [Samantha], there is no question but that at some point during [her] childhood [Samantha] moved out of her father’s house and beyond this simple fact it is not plausible or reasonable for any jury hearing this evidence to conclude that anything defamatory occurred towards the Plaintiff by reason of these three words appearing in a biography written about Defendant.
However, Samantha’s team will try to argue that Megan was making a “much broader attack” in many interviews. In addition, they will submit that the judge failed to consider the cumulative import of such statements in the original ruling.
The appellant shall contend on behalf of the Duchess of Sussex. They think it was a standard defamation case, so there is no need for worry about the procedures followed by the judge. “This is a garden-variety defamation action involving the application of well-established Eleventh Circuit precedent, which the District Court followed,” they said.
