Palin Suit Against NY Times Gets New Life

David Zimmermann reports for National Review Online about bad news for a major media outlet.

A federal appeals court allowed Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, to once again pursue her libel lawsuit against the New York Times two years after a jury ruled in favor of the newspaper.

In its Wednesday ruling, the three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously disregarded the 2022 jury verdict that concluded the Times was not liable for defaming her in a 2017 editorial suggesting she encouraged a mass shooting that wounded a congresswoman years earlier.

The appeals court’s opinion said U.S. district judge Jed Rakoff, who tossed out Palin’s lawsuit twice and oversaw the trial, was mistaken in ruling that the Republican politician did not sufficiently prove the Times knowingly or recklessly published false information about her. The appeals court stood by the plaintiff’s legal claim of “actual malice.” This marks the second time that the court panel revived Palin’s suit; Rakoff first dismissed the complaint in 2019.

Among the problems that the three appeals judges found was potential bias of the jury in the form of news alerts from the Times. Jurors received push notifications on their smartphones about the case while they were deliberating.

“We have no difficulty concluding that an average jury’s verdict would be affected if several jurors knew that the judge had already ruled for one of the parties on the very claims the jurors were charged with deciding,” Judge John Walker Jr. wrote. Appointed by George H. W. Bush, Walker was joined by George W. Bush appointee Reena Raggi and Donald Trump appointee Richard Sullivan in the opinion.

While the jurors have said their verdict wasn’t influenced by the news alerts, the appeals court panel said that outcome is unlikely in such a high-profile case.

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