General
Sarah Palin Is Granted New Libel Trial Against The New York Times
A federal appeals court said that the judge overseeing the original trial, which Ms. Palin lost, had wrongly excluded evidence and might have swayed jurors as they were deliberating.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered a new trial in a long-running and closely watched libel lawsuit that Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential nominee, brought against The New York Times.
The court found that Ms. Palin’s original trial against The Times, which she lost in 2022, had been tainted by problematic rulings by the presiding judge.
The suit, which Ms. Palin first filed in 2017, accused The Times of defaming her in an editorial that wrongly suggested that she had incited a 2011 shooting at a political event in Arizona. Ms. Palin said that the editorial had damaged her reputation, even though The Times had swiftly corrected and apologized for the piece.
A federal jury in New York City ruled for The Times. Ms. Palin appealed, arguing in part that the judge hearing the case had wrongly excluded evidence. She also argued that the jury may have been swayed by announcing that he planned to throw out the lawsuit even as the jury was continuing to deliberate.
The three-judge appeals panel in New York sided with Ms. Palin, saying that the trial judge, Jed S. Rakoff, had made a number of errors that “impugn the reliability” of the verdict. The appeals court called for a new trial.
“This decision is disappointing,” Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for The Times, said. “We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial.”
