Judge dismisses Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against The New York Times in the middle of jury deliberations
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The judge overseeing Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against the New York Times dismissed the case on Monday as the jury was still deliberating its verdict.
US District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that Palin, after a week of testimony, 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.
The Times had published an editorial linking the rhetoric of a political action committee associated with Palin to a 2011 shooting.
Rakoff said he would allow the jury, which began deliberating on Friday afternoon, to continue its deliberations so that it may be used for a future appeal.
Palin 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.
James Bennet, the head of the Times's opinion operation, inserted the phrases Palin claims were defamatory while revising another writer's first draft of "America's Lethal Politics." 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 Palin had not proved that the mistake "was made maliciously, that is, with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard of its falsity."
An appeals court later ruled against Rakoff, setting the stage for a trial. It was initially scheduled to begin on January 24 of this year but was delayed after Palin, who opposes using safe coronavirus vaccines, tested positive for COVID-19.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
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