(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – Even though a jury ruled in favor of the newspaper two years ago, former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has won a major court victory and another chance to pursue her libel lawsuit against the New York Times.
Recently, a three-judge panel from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the 2022 jury verdict that found the Times not liable for defaming Palin in a 2017 editorial.
The editorial had suggested Palin incited a mass shooting that injured a congresswoman years earlier.
The appeals court’s opinion criticized U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who had twice dismissed Palin’s lawsuit and presided over the trial, for wrongly concluding that Palin had not shown enough evidence that the Times knowingly or recklessly published false information about her.
The court sided with Palin on the legal claim of “actual malice.” This is the second time the panel has revived Palin’s lawsuit after Rakoff first dismissed it in 2019.
Moreover, one key issue the appeals judges noted was the potential bias among jurors, who received push notifications about the case from the Times on their smartphones while they were deliberating.
Also, the judges pointed out other significant errors, such as “erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction, a legally erroneous response to a mid-deliberation jury question, and jurors learning during deliberations” about Rakoff’s dismissal of the lawsuit.
Palin initially sued the Times after its editorial board accused her political action committee, SarahPAC, of contributing to the 2011 shooting of then-Representative Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) by distributing a map with crosshairs over 20 electoral districts represented by Giffords and other Democrats.
Two days later, the Times issued a correction, stating: “An editorial on Thursday about the shooting of Representative Steve Scalise incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords.”
“In fact, no such link was established. The editorial also incorrectly described a map distributed by a political action committee before that shooting. It depicted electoral districts, not individual Democratic lawmakers, beneath stylized crosshairs,” it continued.
At this time, it is unclear what the Times will do next—whether they will ask the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the appeal or take the case to the Supreme Court.
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