Duchess of Success succeeds in getting the ridiculous lawsuit by Samantha Markle dismissed

[MrsMaxDeWinter]

Common sense decision this.

I hope that the tabloids who were (most probably) sponsoring this non-case of Samantha Markle's will pay the Duchess of Sussex her legal fees.

The judge correctly found that how Meghan felt about her upbringing was a subjective opinion about her childhood and her relationship with her half-sister. The court found that Meghan's statement about "feeling like an only child" is not objectively verifiable or subject to empirical proof, and, as a statement of pure opinion was “not capable of being proved false”.
The court also said the plaintiff Samantha "cannot plausibly disprove" Meghan's "opinion of her own childhood."

On the claims based on Finding Freedom, the court said the Duchess could not be held accountable for a book that she did not write or publish.

Go Meghan. I'm sure Samantha will file something else again soon ... and that she will lose again.

Have you actually read the judgement?

The Finding Freedom claims were dismissed because SM made the fatal mistake of suing over what was in a book not actually published by the person she is suing. Publication to a third party is an essential element in a defamation claim. These claims were dismissed with prejudice and can't be resubmitted.

She had three other claims based on the CBS interview. All claims were dismissed. One was dismissed because it was subjective opinion that could not be unproven-- MM saying she felt like an only child growing up

The other two were dismissed because SM deliberately twisted and embellished what was said. One claim, that MM said she had met SM a "handful of times" was dismissed because, as the court said. “This statement is nowhere to be found in the interview transcript.”. Another, that SM changed her name after MM and Harry were engaged so that she could "cash in" was dismissed because those words about cashing in were not said either.

Th judge allowed her to refile, but made it clear that she was on a road to nowhere.

As for the Netflix series, MM said very little about SM that was not subjective opinion, eg that they did not fall out because they were never close enough to fall out. Bouzy then said she had multiple Twitter accounts spreading disinformation. On that claim, she was given the right to reply, and used it. Her response was shown in the documentary And the most cutting comments came from her own daughter. She would have to bring a separate legal action if she wants to sue her daughter.

So she can refile, but the result will be the same. There is nothing that Meghan has said that is defamatory of Samantha. If anything, Samantha has destroyed her own reputation.

Strange family, the Markles.

Aren’t they just? But there’s plenty of strange families around. Most don’t get put under a spotlight though, so we just don’t get to see it so much. Dysfunctional
families are everywhere. (I come from one). I see the RF as a dysfunctional family. It’s just that it’s been hidden by so much mystery - smoke and mirrors - for centuries. In the not so distant past, they were held up as a family to emulate in our own small ways - lol to that. I think the Information Age has exposed a lot, and with the advent of social media more of the mystique of the old institutions are crumbling away - bit by bit.

I do think Doria is fab. I’m not surprised her marriage to Thomas didn’t last long. Being surrounded by that lot would be quite an experience.

I do think Doria is fab. I’m not surprised her marriage to Thomas didn’t last long. Being surrounded by that lot would be quite an experience.

Doria is a class act. Not surprisingly she gets a lot of nastiness from the anti-Meghanistas, lots of conspiracy stuff and downright lies.

Iflyaway · 31/03/2023 23:15
Shame I wanted Samantha to win.

Why? She's a nobody flying on the coat tails of her famous half-sister and being a scheming bitch. She seems awful.

Is it OK then to call Samantha a "scheming bitch" whereas if I said Meghan was a "scheming bitch" and a "nobody" MN would explode?

So I'll just say -
They have so much in common those two; obviously sisters

Doria is a class act. Not surprisingly she gets a lot of nastiness from the anti-Meghanistas, lots of conspiracy stuff and downright lies.

I agree that Doria is a class act. And the nasty lies that proliferated on sm only fairly recently were just awful. So wrong.

Whoops, I didn’t mean to quite Badgers post. Not sure how it happened. My response was to MrsMaxDeWinter.

😁

I’ve never seen Samantha speak before because I didn’t bother giving such an awful person my time but a short look at the Vine interview confirmed that was a good decision! She’s obviously a very unhappy person, not very smart either and I suspect somebody is using her now as she wouldn’t be able to bring the case alone. I hope whoever it is leaves her alone and that she, for her own sake, moves on and tries to be happy.

Quite a lot of families are dysfunctional. I know very few people with really good families where everything turns out wonderful. Not having a big family, as is the case with Meghan, doesn’t make you a bad person. Sometimes it happens from circumstance, perhaps you’re an only child, or your parents keep to themselves, or maybe everyone lives far away from each other. Sometimes it’s because family suffer tragedy, or divorce or fight so much it’s not healthy for anyone to stay in communication. But it is so incredibly common I’ve always found it really odd that people use it as a stick to beat Meghan with. She seemed to want a big family and looked forward to marrying into one. I feel sad for people that don’t have lots of family around, both my parents are from huge very involved families and it’s really handy as you grow up to have people you can depend on. I don’t think many people actively seek to be alone or without family. My DH lost a parent when young and then the other as a middle aged man. He is so different from other family he doesn’t see anyone regularly and they don’t seem interested in him. Doesn’t make my DH horrible. In all honesty I’ve never known anyone to not like him except for some of his family. So maybe those gleeful at this sad tale should think about all the people they will know who aren’t close to family and consider whether rather than it meaning someone is evil and deserving of your scorn, that perhaps it’s just something that happens in life and isn’t really such a big deal.

Interesting to learn both Samantha Markle & Donald Trump are represented by the same law firm.

It must be awful to carry so much hate for a person you have never met I pity you.

MM has a special pocket in her soul for narcissistic ways of dealing with what she wants, another pocket in her soul to keep all those lies and deceits

Never read so much crap in my life

I actually think the sisters have absolutely nothing in common.

Meghan has the smarts and the looks, and was already making waves in her career, living a high flying life and earning a lot of money.

SM has neither the smarts nor the looks and has made a mess of her life. Her own mother and children say she was abusive. Her jealousy of M boiled over when M met H. She saw her opportunity to cash in on her sister by slagging her off. And colluding with her father to pose for cash. Classy.

Meghan hasn't slagged S off in retaliation. She's just gone off to live her own life. What does that say?

@michaelmacrae Samantha's mother was a very abusive woman who had a constant stream of boyfriends and neglected and abused Samantha and her siblings. She was a dreadful woman and Thomas compounded the awful life his daughter had by abandoning them all. They married very young and it was a disaster the children paid the price for. Eventually Samantha went to live with her father and Doria and Meghan and that wasn't successful either as Doria and Samantha didn't get along. Who knows on what side the fault lay?

My point is Samantha is a product of an abusive upbringing and she went on to perpetuate the cycle of neglect in her own parenting. She is to be pitied. Meghan in comparison grew up in a wealthy home had private schooling and a father and mother who dearly loved her.

Of course Samantha should just be quiet, but equally Meghan should say nothing about her sister if she can't be at least kind.

This whole thing and the online hatred for Meghan and Harry, including by Samantha, reminds me of this story about Brenda, a woman who trolled the McCann’s.

___

*Her trolling and subsequent suicide resulted in a number of newspaper stories: about the toxic culture of Twitter; the danger of people hiding behind avatars and fake names on social media; the biliousness of Brenda’s attack on the McCanns; and the tragedy of her death. What could have led a woman to post hundreds of tweets attacking a couple she had never met, and why did she think there was nothing left to live for when she was caught out?

Ben knew his mother had the capacity to rage, and that she had strong opinions about the McCanns, but he had never seen anything like this. Tweets included: “#mccann Q ‘How long must the mccanns suffer?’ Answer ‘For the rest of their miserable lives’”; “I think Kate #mccann sees herself as a modern day Eva Peron beautiful, suffering, instead of a booze filled nymphomaniac”; “Hate a powerful emotion, it is a compliment to Maddie that we ‘hate’ her parents who betrayed her”; “You can move to France, anywhere, but social media is everywhere, our memories are long”; “To Kate and Gerry, you will be hated by millions for the rest of your miserable, evil, conniving lives, have a nice day.”

Did she have any sense of the pain that the tweets might cause the McCanns? “It’s difficult to say. I think she lost sight of their humanity, and they were just the target of the ‘investigation’.”

He uses the word investigation deliberately. Ben was later to discover that Brenda didn’t think of herself as a troll, but as a journalist investigating the McCanns. “In her last will and testament, she said her job title was investigative journalist. That was the role she had assumed,” he says. Had she ever done any journalism? “No.”

Two weeks after Brenda took her own life, the then justice secretary Chris Grayling quadrupled the maximum custodial sentence for trolling to two years. Grayling said: “These internet trolls are cowards who are poisoning our national life. No one would permit such venom in person, so there should be no place for it on social media.”

Brenda Leyland spent her life hiding – by making things up, and concealing herself behind fake names and avatars. After she died, Ben examined her Twitter account closely. There were friends in the McCann trolling community who grieved her passing. But, by and large, after she was exposed people on social media were cruel and unforgiving. In her final days, the troll was trolled mercilessly.

As Brenda had forgotten about the McCanns’ humanity, so her critics forgot about hers. Ben believes in her final hours she would have read some of these tweets.*

The question is why are they like that. What has happened that has created people who are only able to find joy in venting their spleen and displaying their resentments in this way?” He talks about how many people feel alienated from society, the number living in poverty, the paucity of mental health support. “If you treat the symptom, you never get to the heart of the problem. The problem is: why are people so angry and afraid?”

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/18/my-mother-troll-of-madeleine-mccann-parents

The word 'hate' is bandied around willy nilly and quite often used inappropriately. Samantha's campaign is run on jealousy not hate, just as ugly a trait but not the same.

What has happened that has created people who are only able to find joy in venting their spleen and displaying their resentments in this way?

Jealousy turns to hate. And Samantha is filled with both. Don't know how you could have viewed her interview and not see that.

I agree it's hate. Nobody likes to admit it because it is so irrational. The idea of harbouring such strong negative feelings for someone you really don't know. MN is anonymous so posters feel comfortable with some of the comments they make.

Thank you for that @Whaeanui that was a very interesting read. I remember people had very strong feelings at the time and again it was relentless but the trolling is unimaginable not just for the McCanns but their friends and family.

Absolute rubbish.

Samantha's mother was a very abusive woman who had a constant stream of boyfriends and neglected and abused Samantha and her siblings. She was a dreadful woman
Funny that Samantha’s mum Roslyn raised two of S’s daughters, who are still close to Roslyn. Roslyn was awarded custody because Samantha was an unfit and abusive mother. That custody would not have been granted had Roslyn in fact been abusive & neglectful to Samantha.

Who knows on what side the fault lay?
🤔 Hmmm. Some things are just unknowable, right? In this case, I’m going to hazard a wild guess that the person who referred to her Black stepmother as “the maid” just might be at fault!

Meghan in comparison grew up in a wealthy home. Meghan by comparison was raised in a stable home. Meghan was mostly raised by single mother Doria in a flat above a garage in a nice neighbourhood. Thomas earned good money but also had expenses like child support.

Meghan should say nothing about her sister if she can't be at least kind. How absurd. Meghan had an obligation to finally defend herself from a hateful, toxic relative who has been carrying out an coordinated, global campaign of bullying & harassment against her, supported and paid for by the toxic British tabloid media.
Meghan was far kinder than I would’ve been with an evil, jealous half-sister like Samantha!

@PreparationPreparationPrep yes I found the article very sad, as it was an interview with her son, who knew she made up stories but had no idea until 4 days before she took her own life that she was capable of what she did to the McCann’s. Her hatred consumed her in the end, and it probably didn’t start from ‘hate’. She clearly felt strongly they were guilty but unlike someone stable, who would maybe say it to their friends but not become obsessed, she focused so much on those feelings it took over her and turned to hatred.

What’s particularly important in her story for me, is that while what she did was wrong and she should have been held responsible somehow, I think most would agree she didn’t deserve to die. That wouldn’t have been the punishment. But the Sky reporter knew that the story of her, sharing her face, would be what their viewers wanted. Justice, in societies eyes, would be to unmask her and punish her with the same hate she had dished out. Even the reporter, while saying he had no idea that would happen, realised you could not separate the fact his story exposing her, led to her death.

I posted it because I thought it would be something everyone on this board might like to reflect on, as there are similarities with Samantha, but with a lot of people who spew the same unpleasantness about people they don’t know, as this sad lady had done before she died.

It is really sad and is something to reflect on, for sure.

I agree @Whaeanui

Maybe that's one of the consequences of anonymous online forums, where anything goes (I'm not talking about MN)

Especially as this allows people to align themselves with likeminded people sharing the same viewpoints. If it is just negative about someone or something that has no impact on your life then it can't be healthy. It consumed her in the end and even her son didn't have any idea. He must have been devastated.

She was mentally fragile hence her trolling but I guess none of us know our tipping point.

I think the Markle gene runs strong through the whole family and haven't seen anything yet from any family member to make me think or say anything different.

I do hope you aren't implying everyone who makes a dissenting comment on the couple is a Brenda or a Brenda in the making because that would be ridiculous 😁

I'd also like to point out (again) that I haven't felt the need to call anyone a 'scheming bitch' as has been said on here about Samantha Markle.

In a nutshell

This 🤣🤣🤣