lev radin / Shutterstock.com
CV NEWS FEED // Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times was opened up once more by a federal appeals court earlier this week.
The defamation case was dismissed in 2022 when a court found the New York Times was not liable for a 2017 editorial piece that suggested a graphic from Palin’s political action committee was connected to a shooting in 2011.
According to ABC News, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found on August 28, 2024, that the 2022 dismissal of the case was faulty.
“Unfortunately, several major issues at trial—specifically, the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction, a legally erroneous response to a mid-deliberation jury question, and jurors learning during deliberations of the district court’s Rule 50 dismissal ruling—impugn the reliability of that verdict,” the court stated in its opinion.
The court also found that the judge who dismissed the case two years ago before the jury reached a verdict “erroneously disregarded or discredited [Palin’s] evidence of actual malice and improperly substituted its own judgment for that of the jury.”
The editorial in question drew connections between Palin, a Republican, and former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, a Democrat, who was wounded during a shooting in a supermarket parking lot, according to the New York Times.
The editorial reported that before the shooting, Palin’s team had “circulated a map that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs” and that “no connection to the shooting was ever established.”
Days later, the Times apologized and corrected the story, stating that it had “incorrectly described” the map and “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting.”
According to ABC News, Palin is “happy” with the court’s decision to reopen the case.
“Governor Palin is very happy with today’s decision, which is a significant step forward in the process of holding publishers accountable for content that misleads readers and the public in general,” said Shane Vogt, a lawyer for Palin, according to ABC News:
The truth deserves a level playing field, and Governor Palin looks forward to presenting her case to a jury that is ‘provided with relevant proffered evidence and properly instructed on the law’ as set forth in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ opinion.
According to the Washington Post, New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander called the court’s decision “disappointing” but said that “we’re confident we will prevail in a retrial.”
