Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate, plans to seek a new trial and have the judge disqualified after losing her defamation case against the New York Times.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan discussed Palin’s plan at a hearing on Wednesday, and said he will issue a written opinion by March 1 explaining why he dismissed her case while jurors were deliberating.
He said he would speed up the opinion because of the ‘fracas’ surrounding the dismissal.
The unusual hearing came eight days after jurors rejected Palin’s claim that the Times and former editorial page editor James Bennet defamed her in a June 2017 editorial.
A New York judge has tossed Sarah Palin’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times because her lawyers failed to produce evidence of the newspaper had actual malice against her. Pictured: Palin talking to the media after the judge’s ruling last Monday
US District Judge Jed Rakoff defended his decision to scrap the case due to Palin’s legal team’s failure to produce evidence that The Times acted with ‘actual malice’ when publishing factual inaccuracies about the ex-Alaska governor in a 2017 op-ed piece titled ‘America’s Lethal Politics’
The piece made the point linking a map circulated by Palin’s political action committee and a 2011 mass shooting that gravely wounded US Rep. Gabby Giffords.
She claimed she was defamed by the erroneous editorial entitled ‘America’s Lethal Politics.’
That editorial incorrectly linked Palin to a mass shooting in 2011 where six people died and then-congresswoman Gabby Giffords was seriously wounded. It was corrected the morning after being published.
Throughout the trial The Times argued that its editors had made an honest mistake which was quickly corrected.
Clinton appointee Judge Ned Rakoff, pictured, said in an order last week that jurors knew before delivering their verdict against Palin earlier this month that he had ruled against her as a matter of law
A day before the jury verdict, Rakoff said he planned to dismiss Palin’s case even if jurors found in her favor, because she had not shown that the Times acted with ‘actual malice.’
Rakoff, 78, is considered a maverick known for tussling with Wall Street regulators and criticizing the U.S. sentencing regimes.
Rakoff did not tell jurors about his ruling, but several told his law clerk in routine post-trial discussions that they learned about it through ‘push’ notifications sent from news media to their cellphones.
In an order last week, Rakoff said jurors assured his clerk that the notifications did not affect their deliberations, which lasted about two days.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Rakoff gave Palin’s lawyers until March 15 to formally request that he reconsider his dismissal, set aside the jury verdict or grant a new trial, disqualify himself, allow them to interview jurors, and discuss whether he spoke to the media during the trial.
Court sketch shows a moody looking Palin sitting in court wearing a mask and looking at James Bennett, former editorial page editor of The New York Times, being embraced by his lawyers
‘I had zero communications with the media during trial. None whatsoever,’ Rakoff said. He said he talked with a reporter about the push notifications only after jurors ruled for the Times.
The newspaper has until March 29 to respond to Palin’s expected motion.
If the verdict stands, Palin is expected to appeal.
Her case is widely seen as a test of New York Times v Sullivan, a landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision making it difficult for public figures to prove defamation.
To win, they must show that news media acted with actual malice in publishing false information, meaning they knew the information was false or had reckless disregard for the truth.
Two conservative Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have suggested that the Sullivan precedent be reconsidered.
Judge Jed Rakoff is seen in court on Monday, as Palin looks on while he instructs the jury
Rakoff, an appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, joined the federal bench in 1996 after working as a federal prosecutor and defense lawyer and is seen as a leading authority on securities laws and white-collar crime.
Among lawyers, he is known as a witty, hard-working judge who despite being having taking senior status, a form of semi-retirement for judges, has maintained an active court docket with a demanding trial schedule and high-profile cases.
Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University School of Law and a friend of Rakoff’s, called him an “intellectually independent” judge who trusts his instincts.
In one of his most high-profile rulings, Rakoff in 2002 declared the federal death penalty unconstitutional, saying it created “an undue risk of executing innocent people.” He was later reversed on appeal.
Rakoff has said he issued that ruling even though earlier in his life he enthusiastically backed the death penalty, after his older brother was murdered in the Philippines, where the killer got a three-year sentence.
Palin is seen in court in Manhattan as the jury returned their verdict – despite the judge having thrown the case out the previous day
The iconoclastic judge has long been a critic of the federal sentencing guidelines used by judges to estimate a recommended prison term for defendants, blasting the “absurd” long sentences they generate for fraud defendants.
He has at times been a thorn in the side of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by helping fuel a debate over its longstanding practice of allowing defendants to settle civil charges without admitting wrongdoing.
In 2011, he refused to approve the SEC’s $285 million financial crisis-related settlement with Citigroup Inc. Rakoff at the time said he had no way to know if the accord was in the public interest.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately concluded Rakoff abused his discretion. But by then, then-SEC Chair Mary Jo White had adopted a policy of requiring admissions in some, though not all, instances.
