Sarah Palin 'very happy' as her defamation lawsuit against The New York Times reopens
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: A federal appeals court on Wednesday, April 28, revived former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, citing significant issues that "impugn the reliability" of the original trial's outcome.
Palin initially filed the lawsuit against the Times and its former opinion editor, James Bennet, following the publication of a 2017 editorial that incorrectly linked her to a 2011 mass shooting.
Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against The New York Times
The case centers around a 2017 New York Times editorial titled "America’s Lethal Politics," which wrongly connected Sarah Palin to a tragic 2011 mass shooting that killed six people and seriously injured Democratic US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
The editorial was published on the same day a gunman opened fire on Republican politicians practicing for a congressional charity baseball game in a Washington, DC suburb, injuring six people, including Republican Rep Steve Scalise.
The original lawsuit was dismissed, but in 2019 the Second Circuit vacated that dismissal, and the case proceeded to trial in 2022.
However, the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals later criticized the trial judge for dismissing the case before the jury had reached a verdict, as ABC News reported.
Court highlights several errors during Sarah Palin's defamation trial against The New York Times
The appeals court highlighted several errors during the trial, including the exclusion of evidence, inaccurate jury instructions, and a legally flawed response to a jury question during deliberations.
“Unfortunately, several major issues at trial — specifically, the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction, a legally erroneous response to a mid-deliberation jury question, and jurors learning during deliberations of the district court’s Rule 50 dismissal ruling — impugn the reliability of that verdict,” said 2nd Circuit Judge John Walker of US District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan.
The appeals court did not find Rakoff biased against Palin, but they concluded that the judge's actions during the trial could have influenced the jury’s decision.
"We have no difficulty concluding that an average jury’s verdict would be affected if several jurors knew that the judge had already ruled for one of the parties on the very claims the jurors were charged with deciding," Judge Walker added.
He also addressed concerns about jurors being influenced by the judge’s dismissal, noting, "We think a jury’s verdict reached with the knowledge of the judge’s already-announced disposition of the case will rarely be untainted, no matter what the jurors say upon subsequent inquiry."
The New York Times and Sarah Palin respond to court ruling on new trial
Following the ruling, The New York Times expressed disappointment but remained confident in their position.
"This decision is disappointing. We're confident we will prevail in a retrial," the Times said.
Palin, sued the Times in 2017, claiming that the erroneous editorial had defamed her and damaged her career. It was nine years after she was chosen as Senator John McCain's Republican vice-presidential nominee.
She welcomed the court's decision. "Governor Palin is very happy with today's decision," her lawyer Shane Vogt said.
Her legal team described the ruling as "a significant step forward in the process of holding publishers accountable for content that misleads readers and the public in general."
"The truth deserves a level playing field, and Governor Palin looks forward to presenting her case to a jury that is 'provided with relevant proffered evidence and properly instructed on the law' as set forth in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals' opinion," they stated further.
