A Manhattan judge on Tuesday denied former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s request to reconsider his ruling that the New York Times didn’t defame her or recuse himself from the case.
“(The) evidence showed that (James) Bennet and the Times’s Editorial Board made mistakes as they rushed to meet a print deadline, and that their editorial processes failed to catch those mistakes before publication,“ wrote Manhattan Federal Court Judge Jed Rakoff.
”But in a defamation case brought by a public figure like Sarah Palin, a mistake is not enough to win if it was not motivated by actual malice. And the striking thing about the trial here was that Palin, for all her earlier assertions, could not in the end introduce even a speck of such evidence. Palin’s motion is hereby denied in its entirety.”
While jurors deliberated on February 14 whether the newspaper defamed Palin in the 2017 editorial “America’s Lethal Politics,” Rakoff issued a surprise finding that it did not, and that he would have dismissed the case.
The next day, Feb. 15, the jury returned with the same verdict Rakoff had delivered — it did not believe the Times had libeled Palin.
The jurors and Rakoff made their determinations despite Palin’s argument that the Times had erroneously linked her campaign literature to a 2011 mass shooting.
The day after the jury returned its verdict, on Feb. 16, Rakoff said he had learned members of the panel got news notifications on their cell phones alerting them of his decision.
That backed Palin’s effort to file motions and appeals to overturn the case.
Palin’s appeal before the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals seeking a new trial and a new judge is pending. Her lawyers declined comment.
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