NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday reinstated Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, citing errors by a lower court judge, particularly his decision to dismiss the case during jury deliberations.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan wrote that Judge Jed S. Rakoff’s decision in February 2022, dismiss the lawsuit in the middle of the deliberations improperly interfered in the work of the jury.
Additionally, erroneous exclusion of evidence, inaccurate jury instruction and an erroneous response to a jury question were found to influence the jury’s decision to rule against Palin. However, Palin’s motion to have Rakoff thrown out of the case was denied because it was biased against her. The 2nd Circuit said she had not presented any evidence.
At the heart of the defamation suit filed by Palin, a former Republican vice presidential candidate and governor of Alaska, was a 2017 newspaper editorial that falsely linked her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting, which Palin claimed damaged her reputation and career.
While acknowledging the inaccuracy of its editorial, the Times said it quickly corrected the errors, which it called “honest mistakes” and was never intended to harm Palin.
Palin’s lawyer Shane Vogt wrote in an email that Palin was “very pleased with today’s decision. It is a significant step forward in the process of holding publishers accountable for content that misleads readers and the public at large.”
“The truth deserves a level playing field, and Governor Palin looks forward to presenting her case to a jury ‘armed with the necessary evidence and properly instructed on the law,'” Vogt added, quoting in part from the 2nd Circuit’s ruling.
Charlie Stadtlander, a Times spokesman, said the decision was disappointing. “We are confident we will succeed in a retrial,” he wrote in an email.
The 2nd Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge John M. Walker Jr., overturned the jury’s verdict, as well as Rakoff’s decision to dismiss the case during jury deliberations.
Despite his decision, Rakoff allowed the jury to finish their deliberations and pass judgmentwhich turned out to be against Palin.
The appeals court found that Rakoff’s verdict made credibility findings, weighed evidence, and ignored facts or conclusions that a reasonable juror could plausibly believe supported Palin’s case.
It also described how “push notifications” reaching jurors’ cellphones “came as an unfortunate surprise to the district judge.” The 2nd Circuit said it was not enough that the judge’s law clerk had been assured by jurors that Rakoff’s decision had not influenced their deliberations.
“Given the special position of influence a judge holds over a jury, we believe that a verdict rendered in the knowledge of the judge’s decision on the case is rarely unaffected by what the jury may say during subsequent questioning,” the appeals court said.
In its ruling Wednesday, the 2nd Circuit said it was granting a retrial because there were several procedural errors and because Rakoff’s decision against Palin during deliberations – which may have reached jurors through alert messages sent to cell phones – “calls into question the reliability of this verdict.”
“The jury is sacrosanct in our legal system and we have a duty to protect its constitutional role by, on the one hand, ensuring that the role of the jury is not usurped by judges and, on the other, ensuring that juries are provided with the relevant evidence and are adequately instructed on the law,” the appeals court said.
