Attorneys for Donald Trump have requested a new trial in the defamation case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, hours before he was unofficially crowned the Republican party’s presidential candidate.
Trump’s attorneys, led by Alina Habba, filed papers in federal court on Tuesday arguing that the jury’s compensatory and punitive awards of $83m for denying he sexually abused her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s are out of proportion and should be reduced.
The former president’s lawyers identified case law that they said could reduce punitive damages to no more than $36.6m – and less if the compensatory component of the judgment, including millions to restore Carroll’s reputation, were reduced as well.
In court papers, the attorneys also argued that a district court could grant a motion for a new trial because evidence had been excluded from the case and the jury had been “erroneously instructed”.
“This Court’s erroneous decision to dramatically limit the scope of President Trump’s testimony almost certainly influenced the jury’s verdict, and thus a new trial is warranted,” the attorneys wrote.
Trump’s testimony about his state of mind when he made disparaging comments while president in 2019 were stricken from the record by Judge Lewis Kaplan, a ruling that, his attorneys claim, was prejudicial.
“President Trump’s testimony about his own state of mind is the most relevant and probative evidence on the issue of common-law malice, and he was uniquely positioned to address it,” his attorneys wrote.
“By erroneously foreclosing any such testimony – and erroneously striking the one sentence of President Trump’s testimony on this point – the Court all but assured that the jury would make a baseless punitive-damages award,” they added.
Trump’s challenge to the E Jean Carroll defamation award against him said Judge Kaplan’s jury instruction to the jury was in error, because it “does not require a showing that intent to injury was the sole ... motivation for the challenged statements” under New York law.
The court filing comes as Trump faces a separate $454m judgment handed down by a New York court last month for falsifying the value of his properties in order to obtain preferential bank loans and insurance rates.
Later this month, he faces further legal action over a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. The case, due to begin on 25 March, may keep the presidential candidate off the campaign trail for periods of time in his long, nine-month rematch with Joe Biden.
Attorneys for E Jean Carroll were not immediately available for comment.
