Jurors found Tuesday that The New York Times did not defame Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate, in a June 2017 …
Jurors found Tuesday that The New York Times did not defame Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate, in a June 2017 editorial that wrongly claimed a link between an ad from her political action committee and a mass shooting many months later. It was a one-two punch for Palin. The unanimous verdict came a day after the presiding judge, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, ruled that he would set aside the jury’s verdict – whatever it might be – and dismiss the case. He said Palin had failed to make a sufficient argument that the Times had acted with actual malice to let the case be determined by a jury. That legal standard, set in a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that also involved the Times, requires that the newspaper either knowingly published damning and false information, or recklessly disregarded the likelihood that its claims were likely to prove false. « You decided the facts, I decided the law, » Rakoff told jurors Tuesday. « It turns out they were both in agreement, in this case. » The newspaper cheered the verdict, with spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades-Ha calling it « a reaffirmation of a fundamental tenet of American law: public figures should not be permitted to use libel suits to punish or intimidate news organizations that make, acknowledge and swiftly correct unintentional errors. » Palin is believed likely to appeal.
