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Samantha Markle made her long-awaited court appearance this week in a defamation case against her half-sister, Meghan.
The 58-year-old claims the Duchess of Sussex peddled lies about her in both her Oprah Winfrey interview in 2021 and the 2020 biography, Finding Freedom.
She launched her lawsuit last year and is seeking $75 000 (R1,3 million) in damages, claiming Megan's allegations subjected her to “humiliation, shame and hatred on a worldwide scale”.
The hearing was conducted remotely via video on Wednesday, 15 February and Samantha appeared with her lawyer, Peter Ticktin.
Ticktin told the court that Finding Freedom, written by British journalist Omid Scobie and royal reporter Carolyn Durand, was “used by the duchess to affirm this false narrative that she supposedly lived this rags-to-riches thing”.
READ MORE | Meghan Markle is keen to heal the rift with her estranged father – but her half-sister claims it’s all lies
Samantha claims Meghan lied about growing up in poverty when she actually enjoyed a middle-class background. She says their father, Thomas Markle, paid for her education at elite private schools, university tuition fees as well as dance and acting lessons.
“She [Meghan] got caught. She was lying about her education, that she was getting all these scholarships. Her father paid for her education for goodness sakes, and she got caught with this lie,” her lawyer said.
“Why else is she putting her sister down? Why else is she putting her father down? Why else is she denying her family who has done nothing but been good to her all her life?
"She never had a problem with them at all. Probably never realising this would put an innocent person into the fray where all of a sudden she has hundreds of threats on her life coming at her, a stalker she had to deal with,” he continued.
"Here's a woman who's in wheelchair who had to deal with bringing up three children and this is how she’s treated by her sister, it's amazing."
Meghan is the only child from Thomas’ second marriage to Doria Ragland. The pair were married from 1979 to 1987 while Samantha and her brother, Thomas, are from his first marriage to Roslyn Markle.
The duchess’ legal team argued that their client was merely stating her impressions about her life growing up and asked the judge to dismiss the case.
Meghan’s lawyer, Michael Kump, said 90% of Ticktin’s comments were “inappropriate' and were “quite frankly offensive to my client".
“Not every perceived slight ought to be litigated and that's true here. The plaintiff is taking issue with Meghan’s own impressions of her own childhood growing up but that’s not a proper subject matter for a court of law,” he told the court.
He also argued that seven of the 10 alleged defamatory statements cited by Samantha were from Finding Freedom and should be excluded since Meghan did not write nor publish the book.
“The law in Florida is clear – publication requires that the defendant made or published the false statement.”
Kump further argued that Meghan’s comments in the Oprah interview were not defamatory when taken in context, including that she said she was an only child.
Judge Charlene Honeywell is set to issue a written judgement soon but Ticktin suggested that Samantha might file another defamation lawsuit based on Meghan and Harry’s recent Netflix series.
“If this gets dismissed we could file a lawsuit on the more recent things but I think it's more prudent to deal with it here," he said.
"Now we have this whole deal on Netflix where Meghan again defamed her sister.”
Sources: dailymail.co.uk, tmz.com
