Inside Meghan Markle's Court Showdown With Half Sister

Meghan Markle is two weeks out from a make or break fight to get her half sister's libel lawsuit thrown out.

Samantha Markle sued the Duchess of Sussex over her Oprah Winfrey interview and comments made in her Netflix series Harry & Meghan.

Meghan's lawyers have asked the judge to dismiss the case without a trial, which would allow the royal to swerve the need to submit to a deposition, to testify and to potentially release private messages.

The two parties will go head-to-head in a high stakes hearing listed for November 8 at 1.30 p.m. ET, at the Federal Court in Tampa, Florida.

At the end of last week, the court finally published the date after months of waiting and, for Samantha, this will be the third time she has had to fight to save the lawsuit.

If she is unsuccessful it will be her last after a judge told her in March that she had "one final opportunity" to make the case work.

However, if she is successful not only will she get her trial but Meghan will have until January 2 to undergo a process called "discovery," which would see her hand over to her half sister private texts, emails and other documents relevant to the case. A trial date has been set for July 2024.

The Danger of Discovery

In another of Meghan's lawsuits, against The Mail on Sunday, she was forced to apologize in a lengthy witness statement after her private messages were handed over to the Court of Appeal, in November 2021.

The duchess' lawyers had always denied that she secretly co-operated with royal biography Finding Freedom until Jason Knauf, former communications secretary at Kensington Palace, provided emails showing she had authorized him to brief the authors off the record.

Among the messages, Prince Harry wrote: "Also, are u planning on giving them [the authors] a rough idea of what she's been through over the last 2yrs? Media onslaught, cyber bullying on a different scale, puppeteering Thomas Markle etc etc etc.

"Even if they choose not to use it, they should hear what it was like from someone who was in the thick of it. So if you aren't planning on telling them, can I ?!"

Samantha Markle's Allegations

Samantha has said that she was close to Meghan in childhood and helped look after her while at their father Thomas Markle's house.

However, Meghan told Oprah Winfrey in her March 2021 interview: "I grew up as an only child," which "everyone who grew up around me knows, and I wished I had siblings."

And in her Netflix show 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." She added: "You're telling people you raised me," referring to her half sister.

In a court filing seen by Newsweek, Samantha's lawyers said: "The Series undermined Samantha. It both directly stated and implied that everything Samantha was saying or had said was a lie."

"Meghan continues to participate in and perpetuate the lies around her family and upbringing," the filing read, "and where Meghan could have set the record straight, she did not.

"Instead, Meghan continues the hurtful lies being told about her sister, Samantha; lies that have defamed Samantha and the negative fallout that has therefrom occurred."

Meghan's lawyers said in a court filing: "Three times [Samantha] has tried—and failed—to turn a personal grudge into a federal case for reasons unbeknownst to Meghan, relying solely on non-actionable opinions and third-party statements. This action should be dismissed with prejudice."

Meghan's side argue many of the statements complained of were opinion and therefore cannot be either true or false.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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