Delaware Court Dismisses Candace Owens Individually From Macron Suit

Delaware Court Dismisses Candace Owens Individually and Holds French Law Sets the Limitations Clock in Macron v. Owens

The Delaware Superior Court on October 27, 2026 dismissed Candace Owens individually from the Macron defamation suit for lack of personal jurisdiction, kept the case alive against her two Delaware companies, and held that French law supplies the limitations period while deferring whether the claims are timely.

Information last verified on October 31, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This covers a Delaware state trial court ruling on Delaware procedure (Superior Court Civil Rules 12(b)(2), 12(b)(3), 12(b)(6) and 12(f)), the Delaware consent and long-arm statutes, and Delaware choice of law under 10 Del. C. 8121. It does not resolve any question of liability, truth or falsity, it does not state French press law independently of what the opinion recounts, and it does not govern defamation suits filed in other states.

What Happened

Judge Sheldon K. Rennie issued a 56 page Memorandum Opinion and Order in Macron v. Owens, C.A. No. N25C-07-194 SKR, in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware. The motion was submitted on July 27, 2026, the day oral argument was heard, and decided on October 27, 2026. The caption records the outcome as granted in part and denied in part.

The plaintiffs are Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Macron, the President and First Lady of France, who the opinion notes have been married since 2007. They sued over what they describe as a global defamation campaign concerning the First Lady's identity, the nature of the couple's marriage and a purported criminal cover-up.

Three defendants were named. Candace Owens is a Tennessee resident and domiciliary who hosts the podcast Candace. Candace Owens LLC is a Delaware limited liability company headquartered in Nashville, registered to do business in Delaware, of which Owens is the sole member and the sole manager. Georgetom, Inc. is a Delaware corporation, also headquartered in Nashville, that operates CandaceOwens.com, including a merchandise storefront and paid podcast subscriptions.

The court resolved four things. It granted the Rule 12(b)(2) motion as to Owens alone and dismissed her from the action. It denied the Rule 12(b)(3) forum non conveniens motion brought by the two entities. It denied the Rule 12(f) motion to strike the Amended Complaint. And it deferred its final determination on the Rule 12(b)(6) limitations defense pending supplemental briefing on foreign law.

None of that is a ruling on the merits. The opinion does not decide whether any statement about the Macrons was true or false, whether any statement was defamatory, or whether the defendants acted with actual malice. Those questions were not before the court on this motion and remain undecided as against the two remaining defendants.

The jurisdictional holding rests on two separate legs, which the court stated in its introduction:

"As a threshold matter, Plaintiffs did not attempt service under the applicable consent statutes, a fatal procedural defect that independently bars the exercise of statutory jurisdiction. Further, even if service had been attempted, Ms. Owens' nominal status as a manager of a Delaware LLC is constitutionally insufficient to establish minimum contacts for an out-of-state tort claim." Source: Macron v. Owens, Del. Super. Ct., C.A. No. N25C-07-194 SKR, Memorandum Opinion and Order at 3 (Oct. 27, 2026)

The background in the opinion is drawn from the Amended Complaint, which runs 248 pages and 690 paragraphs. The pleaded sequence begins with a March 11, 2024 episode of Owens' then current show, titled "INSANE. This is The BIGGEST Political Scandal in Human History," which focused on a then ongoing French defamation lawsuit concerning assertions about Mrs. Macron's identity, which the Amended Complaint alleges are false.

The opinion records her dismissal from The Daily Wire on March 22, 2024, after which she launched the Candace podcast on June 10, 2024. The Amended Complaint alleges that the defendants began promoting and selling related merchandise on July 8, 2024.

The Macrons emailed a retraction demand on December 3, 2024. The defendants responded formally on January 16, 2025. On January 31, 2025 the defendants began an eight part series on the Macrons titled Becoming Brigitte, publishing the final episode on February 20, 2025, with the episodes detailed in paragraphs 108 to 181 of the Amended Complaint.

A final retraction demand followed on July 1, 2025. The original complaint was filed on July 23, 2025, the Amended Complaint on September 26, 2025, and the motion decided here was filed on October 30, 2025.

Why the Court Found No Personal Jurisdiction Over Owens

Delaware applies a two step analysis to a nonresident defendant. The court first asks whether a Delaware statute authorizes jurisdiction, then asks separately whether exercising it satisfies due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The opinion stresses that the two inquiries are independent: satisfying one does not satisfy the other. The plaintiffs invoked three statutes, and none of them supported jurisdiction over Owens individually.

The LLC consent statute, 6 Del. C. 18-109

The plaintiffs did not dispute that they never served Owens under 6 Del. C. 18-109, the provision that treats service as a manager of a Delaware LLC as consent to Delaware jurisdiction in actions involving or relating to the business of the company. The court held that a failure to effectuate service under that specific provision means statutory jurisdiction cannot be exercised through it, with dismissal appropriate under Rule 12(b)(5) and the proper remedy being dismissal without prejudice. The introduction to the opinion describes this defect in the plural, as a failure to serve under the applicable consent statutes, but in the body of the opinion the service holding is located in 18-109 alone. The failure under the corporate consent statute, discussed below, is a pleading failure rather than a service failure.

The court nevertheless addressed the statute's scope and found it reached the claims. Because the statutory clauses are disjunctive, claims that relate to the day to day business of the LLC fall within 18-109 even without a fiduciary duty allegation. The allegations about managing and disseminating content through the entity satisfied that statutory hurdle.

Due process is where the theory failed. Applying the three part test from Assist Stock Management LLC v. Rosheim, the court found the second prong dispositive: this tort action is not inextricably bound up in Delaware law. Owens originated, published and disseminated the challenged statements from her Nashville home, all individual parties live outside Delaware, the entities are headquartered outside Delaware, and the underlying conduct occurred entirely out of state.

On traditional minimum contacts the court was equally direct. It distinguished FeraDyne Outdoors, LLC v. Reaser, where the underlying matter was closer to internal affairs, and characterized this case as a garden variety common law tort that does not implicate Delaware entity governance. The opinion states that the defendants "have not targeted Delaware with their posts, but rather they directed them to a worldwide audience," and that the conduct and claims "have no rational connection to Delaware." Because the claims against the entities can be decided without her individual presence, asserting jurisdiction over Owens on the strength of a fiduciary title would, in the court's words, "offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice."

The corporate consent statute, 10 Del. C. 3114

Section 3114 reaches nonresident directors, trustees, members of a governing body and officers of Delaware corporations, and it defines "officer" narrowly. The opinion recites three prongs: an individual who held one of the enumerated roles, such as president, chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, chief legal officer, controller, treasurer or chief accounting officer; an individual identified in the corporation's public filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission; or an individual who consented by written agreement to be identified as an officer for purposes of the section. The statutory text at 10 Del. C. 3114(b) states the second prong more narrowly than the opinion's summary does, covering a person so identified because they are or were one of the most highly compensated executive officers of the corporation.

The Amended Complaint alleged that Owens oversees and directs all content Georgetom publishes and has primary control over its management, and that she "is a member or manager of Georgetom." It did not allege that she is an officer or director within the statutory definition. The court noted that this gap survived what it describes as an earlier grant of leave to amend specifically to address jurisdictional deficiencies, and held the statutory mechanism could not operate without the basic allegation.

The long-arm statute, 10 Del. C. 3104

The plaintiffs relied on three subsections. Under 3104(c)(1), which reaches a nonresident who transacts business or performs work or service in Delaware, the court applied the settled rule that mere formation of a Delaware entity is not enough; the formation must have been an intentional step in executing the alleged tort. The Amended Complaint never alleged the entities were formed in order to defame the Macrons, only that they were formed to publish commentary.

The alternative attribution theories also failed. The court held it lacks subject matter jurisdiction over an alter ego veil piercing claim because that is equitable relief, and found the pleaded facts insufficient to make the entities Owens' personal agents, noting that establishing a corporation acted as a fiduciary's personal agent is tantamount to piercing the corporate veil.

Under 3104(c)(3) the court held that the tortious act itself must occur inside Delaware. Delaware residents reading or hearing the statements is not enough, because the content was not published from Delaware. The opinion calls the facts analogous to Rotblut v. Terrapinn, Inc., where the court had specific jurisdiction over the corporate website owner but not over the out-of-state individual writer.

Under 3104(c)(4), the general jurisdiction provision, the court found no regular business or solicitation, no persistent course of conduct and no concrete substantial revenue from Delaware. It relied on its own earlier decision in Owens v. Lead Stories, LLC, a defamation action Owens herself brought, and noted she owns no real property, maintains no office or bank accounts and holds no assets in Delaware. The distribution contracts her entities hold with platforms such as Meta, YouTube, Spotify and Amazon could not be imputed to her individually, and her prior use of Delaware courts as a plaintiff in an unrelated matter did not create a continuous presence.

Having failed on every statutory basis, the plaintiffs also lost their request for jurisdictional discovery. In a footnote, the court held they had not shown that Delaware jurisdiction was minimally plausible, so there was no reason to exercise discretion to permit it.

What the Law Actually Says

Two distinct bodies of Delaware law are doing the work in this opinion, and they operate at different stages of a case.

The first is the consent and long-arm framework that decides who can be brought into a Delaware court. The consent statutes tie jurisdiction to a person's role in a Delaware entity; the long-arm statute reaches conduct in or contacts with Delaware. What this ruling holds is that neither route stretches to cover an ordinary out-of-state tort merely because the person who committed it also manages a Delaware entity. The underlying claim remains a conventional defamation claim, governed by the elements a defamation plaintiff has to prove and, where the plaintiff is a public figure, by the actual malice standard.

The second is the borrowing statute, 10 Del. C. 8121. Its text provides that where a cause of action arises outside Delaware, an action cannot be brought in a Delaware court after the expiration of whichever is shorter, the time limited by Delaware law or the time limited by the law of the state or country where the cause of action arose. The opinion describes its purpose as preventing nonresident plaintiffs from forum shopping for a longer limitations period, and notes that the statutory text expressly contemplates a cause of action arising in a foreign country, not just another American state.

To decide where a cause of action arose, Delaware courts use the most significant relationship test from the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws. For multistate defamation the controlling provision is Restatement section 150, and section 150(2) creates a rebuttable presumption that the state with the most significant relationship is the one where the plaintiff was domiciled when the injury occurred. The rationale the opinion gives is that defamation injury is felt primarily where the plaintiff lives among friends, neighbors and professional associates.

A plaintiff can rebut that presumption only by pleading facts showing another jurisdiction has a stronger connection, for example that the plaintiff is better known there, that the defamatory matter relates to an activity principally located there, that greater special damages were sustained there, or that the content achieved its principal circulation there. The court also rejected the argument that it must run the general choice of law principles of Restatement section 6 as a threshold test before the domicile presumption can attach.

This is why the Delaware statute of limitations for defamation, two years, is not the operative deadline in this case even though the suit was filed in Delaware. Our broader explanation of how Delaware treats defamation claims sets out the ordinary in-state rule that the borrowing statute displaced here.

The opinion also disposed of two free speech arguments against borrowing a foreign period. It held that the choice of a limitations period under the borrowing statute is procedural rather than substantive, so applying a foreign country's window does not diminish First Amendment protections. And it held the federal SPEECH Act, 28 U.S.C. sections 4101 to 4105, inapplicable because that statute governs recognition and enforcement of foreign defamation judgments, and there is no foreign judgment here, only a dispute about which sovereign's clock governs a fresh American filing.

The French Limitations Holding, and What It Left Open

Applying those rules, the court began from the undisputed fact that the Macrons are French citizens domiciled in France, which triggered the domicile presumption in favor of French law.

It then weighed the two American candidates. Reputational injury is overwhelmingly concentrated in France, where the plaintiffs live and hold public office, so that factor reinforced the presumption. Tennessee is where the statements were originated, produced and published, which favors Tennessee law, but the court held that the location of publication alone cannot overcome the domicile presumption. Its reasoning was that in the digital age content is routinely sent from one point of origin to a borderless audience, and if the location of the microphone or the server could override the plaintiff's domicile, the Restatement structure for multistate defamation would be subverted.

Delaware incorporation fared worse still. Citing Schmidt v. Washington Newspaper Publishing Co., the court called bare incorporation a nominal connection, and observed that the only intersections between this litigation and Delaware are that the plaintiffs chose to file here and that the entity defendants are incorporated here.

The holding follows: because the plaintiffs could not rebut the presumption that France has the most significant relationship to the claims, the French statute of limitations governs the timeliness of the action under 10 Del. C. 8121.

What the court pointedly did not decide is which French period applies. According to the opinion, the Law of July 29, 1881 on the Freedom of the Press sets a strict three month limitations period for a standard defamation action, through article 32(1), which defines defamation, and article 65-1, which supplies the period. The opinion further states that French statutory law apparently expands that period to one year where the defamation is directed at a person or group on account of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, through article 32(3) and article 65-3.

That characterization is the court's own reading of French law as presented to it, supported by a foreign law declaration from French legal expert Emmanuel Dreyer that the defendants submitted. As the opinion recounts the declaration, Professor Dreyer stated that the extended one year period applies where a speaker reproaches a target for conduct deemed shameful or hostile by reason of a protected characteristic, rather than for a bare assertion about a person's biological identity. He also stated that when the Macrons brought parallel litigation in France over identical statements, they proceeded under article 32, paragraph 1 rather than the discriminatory provision.

The procedural posture matters here. The plaintiffs raised the existence of two French periods for the first time at oral argument, and the opinion states that in their opposition briefing they pleaded no facts about French law and submitted no counter expert testimony or affidavits. The court said it had the authority either to disregard the argument as unbriefed or to adopt the uncontradicted expert interpretation, but chose instead to defer a definitive ruling.

So the Rule 12(b)(6) limitations defense is still pending. The court ordered the remaining parties to file supplemental briefs restricted exclusively to whether the three month baseline or the one year framework applies to these allegations, and directed Delaware counsel to meet and confer on a proposed stipulated briefing schedule.

Forum Non Conveniens and the Motion to Strike

The entity defendants asked the court to decline jurisdiction and send the case to Tennessee. Because this Delaware action is the first and only litigation filed between the parties, the court applied the strict overwhelming hardship standard and weighed the six factors from General Foods Corp. v. Cryo-Maid, Inc., 198 A.2d 681 (Del. 1964).

Access to proof came out neutral, since mere inconvenience to a defendant's witnesses does not meet the standard. Compulsory process was neutral too, with the court noting that under Cryo-Maid the moving defendant bears the burden of identifying specific material witnesses beyond the court's process. There are no premises to view in a digital and broadcast defamation case, so that factor was neutral as well.

The practical problems factor strongly disfavored dismissal, for a reason that cuts against the defendants. Tennessee imposes a one year limitations period for defamation and libel claims under Tenn. Code Ann. section 28-3-104, and the court observed that the claims arise from statements disseminated between January 31, 2025 and February 20, 2025, so a dismissal would leave the plaintiffs temporally barred from refiling there. The court also declined to credit the risk of duplicative or inconsistent rulings as speculative, because no parallel Tennessee proceeding is pending.

On the fifth factor the court noted that Delaware courts routinely interpret and apply foreign law, so the need to apply French law is not by itself an overwhelming hardship. Balancing the factors, it held the defendants had not met their heavy burden and denied the motion, pointing to Delaware's sovereign interest in providing a forum for actions against its own business entities.

The Rule 12(f) motion to strike failed on narrower ground. The opinion states that the plaintiffs filed their Amended Complaint without seeking prior leave of court, which sits awkwardly beside its earlier reference to a grant of leave to amend to address jurisdictional deficiencies, a tension the opinion does not explain. The defendants argued the filing was really a supplement under Rule 15(d), which requires a motion, rather than an amendment under Rule 15(a). The court held the distinction is often inconsequential, that it may treat a purported amendment as a motion to supplement, and that a purely technical formatting error in an otherwise valid amendment does not warrant the drastic remedy of striking relevant allegations. It also rejected the defendants' narrow reading of US Dominion Inc. v. Fox News Network, LLC, holding that statements made after an initial publication can properly illuminate a speaker's intent, state of mind or continuous course of conduct.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The jurisdictional holding concerns how far Delaware's entity consent statutes reach. Many small media and creator businesses are organized in Delaware while their entire operation sits in one room in another state, so whether the formation state is also a forum for the people behind the entity is a live question. The opinion answers it in two different registers. On the LLC statute the court reached the constitutional question and found a manager title insufficient for an out-of-state tort. The corporate consent statute and the long-arm statute failed at the statutory stage on what was pleaded, and for both of those the court expressly declined to reach due process, noting only in footnotes that minimum contacts would fail for the same reasons.

The procedural lesson is separate and more mundane, and it is the one the court put first. Section 18-109 has its own service mechanism, and the plaintiffs did not use it. The court treated that omission as independently fatal to statutory jurisdiction regardless of actual notice, which is a reminder that consent statutes are service statutes, and that invoking one in a brief is not the same as invoking it on the docket.

The choice of law holding is the part with the widest reach. Here the borrowing statute, which the opinion says expressly reaches foreign countries, pointed to France on the strength of a presumption that locates the injury where the plaintiff lives. Borrowing a foreign period is not itself new in Delaware: the same opinion cites earlier decisions that applied the limitations law of Mexico in Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc. v. Arteaga and of the Turks and Caicos in Soares v. Continental Motors, Inc. What carries furthest is the reasoning about the digital age, which treats the place a broadcast is produced as a secondary factor, because the sting of a reputational injury lands where the target lives and works rather than where the microphone sits. Applied to any globally distributed publication, that framing points the limitations analysis toward the plaintiff's home jurisdiction.

It is worth being precise about what the limitations ruling does and does not accomplish. The court decided the choice of law question and nothing else. Whether these claims are timely depends on which French period applies, and the court expressly declined to answer that, ordering briefs instead. We are not going to speculate about how that briefing or any later appeal will come out.

Finally, the forum non conveniens ruling shows the two holdings interacting. The same Tennessee connection that defeated Delaware jurisdiction over Owens personally became an argument against sending the entity case to Tennessee, because the court observed that the Tennessee one year period had run on the January and February 2025 broadcasts.

How This Affects You

For anyone who runs a business through a Delaware entity from another state, the practical takeaway is about exposure rather than immunity. The ruling did not shield the Owens entities, which remain defendants in Delaware; it held that the individual behind them could not be sued there on these facts. Formation state and operating state carry different jurisdictional consequences, and on these facts a Delaware role did not by itself make the person behind the entity answerable in Delaware for a tort committed elsewhere.

For anyone weighing where a defamation claim could be filed, the borrowing statute is a reason not to treat the defendant's state of incorporation as a free choice of deadline. A Delaware filing does not guarantee the Delaware period. If the plaintiff is domiciled elsewhere, including in another country, 10 Del. C. 8121 can import a shorter window, and under Restatement section 150 the plaintiff carries the burden of pleading facts to displace the presumption in favor of their own domicile.

For anyone who publishes to a global audience, the opinion's reasoning runs in both directions. The place of production weighed lightly against a foreign plaintiff's domicile in the choice of law analysis, yet publishing from outside the forum state was decisive in defeating long-arm jurisdiction under 10 Del. C. 3104(c)(3).

One timing point generalizes beyond this case. Defamation limitations periods are short, from the Tennessee one year period cited in the opinion to the three month baseline the opinion attributes to French press law, and, as the opinion describes the French rule, the three months run from publication. Sending a retraction demand letter is a common first step, and the Macrons sent several, but nothing in this opinion suggests such a demand extends any filing deadline.

None of this is a recommendation about any particular dispute. Jurisdiction and limitations analysis turns on the specific facts pleaded.

What Happens Next

The case remains pending in Delaware Superior Court against Candace Owens LLC and Georgetom, Inc. The court has directed Delaware counsel for the remaining parties to meet, confer and submit a proposed stipulated schedule for supplemental briefing, limited to whether the three month baseline or the one year framework in the French press law applies to the allegations in the Amended Complaint. Until that briefing is resolved, the Rule 12(b)(6) limitations defense is undecided. We will update this article as the docket develops.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers Delaware state court procedure and Delaware choice of law, and it reports what the opinion says about Tennessee and French limitations periods rather than stating those laws independently. It reflects sources verified on October 31, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• Defamation law in Delaware, from the elements to the filing deadline
• How Tennessee handles libel and slander claims
• Filing a defamation complaint in France
• Our state by state defamation law overview
• Delaware civil filing deadlines by claim type

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Last updated: 2026-10-31. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-31.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did the Delaware court rule that Candace Owens did not defame the Macrons?

No. The October 27, 2026 opinion in Macron v. Owens decided personal jurisdiction, forum and procedural questions only. It makes no finding about truth, falsity, defamation or actual malice.

Is the Macron lawsuit against Candace Owens over?

Not as to the companies. The Delaware Superior Court dismissed Owens as an individual defendant for lack of personal jurisdiction, and the action continues against Candace Owens LLC and Georgetom, Inc., the two Delaware entities named in the Amended Complaint.

Why was Candace Owens dismissed individually from the Delaware case?

On two independent grounds. The plaintiffs did not attempt service under the LLC consent statute, 6 Del. C. 18-109, which the court held independently bars statutory jurisdiction through that provision, and the court held that serving as manager of a Delaware LLC is constitutionally insufficient for minimum contacts on an out-of-state tort claim. The introduction to the opinion refers more broadly to the applicable consent statutes.

Does French law now control the Macron defamation case?

Only on timeliness. The court held under 10 Del. C. 8121, the Delaware borrowing statute, that French law supplies the limitations period because France has the most significant relationship to the tort. It deferred the question of which French period applies.

What is the Delaware borrowing statute?

10 Del. C. 8121 provides that where a cause of action arises outside Delaware, a Delaware court action is barred after the shorter of the Delaware period or the period set by the law of the state or country where the cause of action arose. The opinion describes it as a bar on forum shopping for a longer deadline.

Does managing a Delaware LLC make you suable in Delaware?

Not automatically, and not for every claim. The court held that 6 Del. C. 18-109 reaches claims relating to the business of the company as a statutory matter, but that due process was not satisfied for a common law tort with no connection to Delaware, and that the statute also requires service under its own terms.

Why did the court refuse to move the case to Tennessee?

The entity defendants had to show overwhelming hardship under the six General Foods Corp. v. Cryo-Maid, Inc. factors and did not. The court also noted that the Tennessee one year period in Tenn. Code Ann. section 28-3-104 would bar refiling on the January and February 2025 statements.