A jury found the New York Times not liable in the defamation case brought by Sarah Palin
REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
- A jury found Tuesday that the New York Times wasn't liable for defaming Sarah Palin in a 2017 editorial.
- The opinion article, which was corrected, drew a link between her PAC and a shooting.
- The judge presiding over the case said yesterday he would throw out the lawsuit regardless of a verdict.
A jury decided Tuesday that the New York Times was not liable in a defamation case brought by Sarah Palin, handing the former vice presidential candidate an uphill climb if she chooses to appeal.
US District Judge Jed Rakoff had already decided Monday that he would dismiss the case. He said that, after listening to a week of testimony, Palin didn't produce enough evidence that the New York Times acted with "actual malice," the legal threshold used for cases of potential defamation against public figures.
"You decided the facts, I decided the law," Rakoff told jurors Tuesday. "It turns out they were both in agreement, in this case."
Rakoff's decision would override any jury verdict, but he allowed the jury to continue deliberating. If the jury found the Times guilty, an appeals court could reinstate the jury's decision over Rakoff's.
Palin told Insider in an interview Thursday that she planned to consider an appeal if she lost the case. If the case ultimately goes to the Supreme Court, Palin said she may ask the nation's highest court to reconsider the "actual malice" standard.
Two right-wing high court justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have both said they believe the standard is inadequate. A change to the standard would mark a historic shift in rulings involving public figures and the press.
The former Alaska governor filed her lawsuit in 2017 over an editorial published by the Times that June titled "America's Lethal Politics." The piece followed the shooting of several Republican members of Congress by a man with a history of opposing their political positions.
The Times article, published in its opinion section, drew a link between the shooting and an earlier one, in 2011, where another man shot then-Democratic Rep. Gabriel Giffords in Arizona, wounding her and killing six others. According to the version of the editorial that was initially published, Palin incited that shooting because her political action committee posted an image on Facebook that put Giffords's district under crosshairs.
The Times corrected the article the next day, admitting that there was no established link between Palin's committee's post and the Giffords shooting. Palin filed her lawsuit two weeks later.
REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
James Bennet, the head of the Times's opinion operation, inserted the phrases that Palin alleged were defamatory while revising another writer's first draft. Bennet resigned from the Times in June 2020 after running an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton calling for the deployment of US military troops to quell American civilian protests, but remains a co-defendant in the lawsuit.
Rakoff initially dismissed the lawsuit in August 2017, ruling that the Times made a "mistake" but that the former Alaska governor didn't prove the mistake "was made maliciously, that is, with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard of its falsity."
An appeals court later overturned Rakoff's decision, setting the stage for a trial. It was scheduled to begin on January 24 of this year but was delayed after Palin, whom the court said wasn't vaccinated against COVID-19, tested positive for the virus.
The trial featured testimony from Bennet, Elizabeth Williamson, who wrote the first draft of the editorial, and other New York Times employees. The Times staffers laid bare the editorial process and how the opinion section — which is separate from the newsroom — handles corrections.
Palin also testified about her feelings about the editorial. She alleged that the Times had a record of "lying" about her, but did not specify any examples, and alleged without evidence that the editorial damaged her career prospects.
After reading from the verdict Tuesday, Rakoff told jurors that they were permitted to speak to the press, but advised them not to, saying it would be "unfair" to other jurors. He told attorneys he didn't want the prospect inquiries from members of the media to dissuade people from being members of juries in the future.
Rakoff's courtroom is across the street from where US District Judge Alison Nathan presided over Ghislaine Maxwell's sex-trafficking trial in December. The guilty verdicts in that case were thrown into doubt after a juror spoke to journalists about his own experience with sexual abuse.
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