A BLACK EYE FOR JUDGE RAKOFF: Sarah Palin Wins New Trial in Defamation Case Against New York Times: Appeals panel says trial judge made errors that deprived Palin of a fair trial.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday revived Sarah Palin’s defamation suit against the New York Times, ruling a trial judge committed a series of errors in presiding over the former Republican vice-presidential candidate’s case.
Palin’s lawsuit, filed in 2017, alleged the newspaper defamed her in an editorial about gun violence. The article incorrectly suggested that an ad circulated by Palin’s political-action committee inspired a 2011 shooting in Tucson, Ariz., where six people died, and then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was wounded. The Times issued two corrections and its editorial board tweeted an apology to its readers.
Palin, who sued the Times and former editorial page editor James Bennet, said those corrective efforts were insufficient.
Palin’s case went to trial in 2022 and a jury sided with the Times. In an unusual move, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff announced during jury deliberations that he planned to dismiss the case after the verdict, concluding that Palin hadn’t met the demanding legal standard of proof.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday said Rakoff’s move was improper and ordered a new trial.
The dismissal “improperly intruded on the province of the jury by making credibility determinations, weighing evidence, and ignoring facts or inferences that a reasonable juror could plausibly have found to support Palin’s case,” Judge John M. Walker wrote for a three-judge panel in a 56-page opinion.
The panel said Rakoff also made other missteps, including the erroneous exclusion of certain evidence, that impugned the reliability of the verdict.
Shane Vogt, a lawyer for Palin, called the ruling “a significant step forward in the process of holding publishers accountable for content that misleads readers and the public in general.”
A New York Times spokesman said the decision was disappointing. “We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial,” he said.
In granting the dismissal, Rakoff concluded that Palin hadn’t presented sufficient evidence that the Times acted with actual malice, meaning that it knew the editorial was false or acted with a reckless disregard for the truth. Public figures such as Palin are required to meet that standard to prevail in defamation cases.
Rakoff announced his ruling outside the presence of the jurors, while they were deliberating. The next day, jurors came to the same conclusion: Palin hadn’t proven her case. Later that evening, some jurors revealed they had seen notifications on their phones about Rakoff’s decision to toss the case. They said the alerts hadn’t affected their views.
But the Second Circuit said Wednesday that it had its doubts.
As it should have. The full opinion is here.