Sarah Palin wins new trial in her libel case against the New York Times over ‘major’ jury disputes

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A federal appeals court has granted Sarah Palin a new trial in her defamation case against The New York Timesafter there were “serious” problems with the jury at her last trial, including push notifications to jurors signaling that the judge overseeing the case was ready to dismiss the case.

In February 2022, a jury unanimously ruled that the newspaper and then-Editorial Editor James Bennet were not liable for defamation related to a 2017 editorial about the rise of violent political rhetoric.

But while the jury was deliberating outside the courtroom and before its decision was announced, District Judge Jed Rakoff told the court that he would dismiss Palin's case anyway because no reasonable jury would find that the newspaper and its editor acted with actual malice in publishing the article.

News of this announcement reportedly reached jurors through push notifications on their cell phones.

Despite the judge's motions to dismiss the case and the jury's verdict, “several key issues at trial” – including how the jury learned of the dismissal – “call into question the credibility of this verdict,” a panel of appellate judges in New York wrote Wednesday, more than two years after the verdict was handed down.

At the heart of Palin's lawsuit is an editorial the newspaper wrote in the aftermath of a shooting at a congressional baseball game in 2017 that criticized the explosive political rhetoric.

While Palin was not the subject of the editorial, a map from her political action committee – which showed crosshairs over Democratic-leaning congressional districts – was used as an example, citing a 2011 shooting in Arizona that nearly killed then-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

In editing the article, Bennet added a sentence saying that “the connection to political incitement was clear” – which Palin said falsely suggested a causal link between her and the 2011 shooting.

The editorial was corrected hours later, and the court heard testimony from New York Times Authors about the editorial process and the errors made in the editorial process as well as the efforts to correct them.

In remarks after the trial, Judge Rakoff said the case was an “example of very unfortunate editorial reporting” but that it did not meet the standard of “actual malice” – a standard the Supreme Court had set in libel cases against public figures in a landmark 1967 ruling in another case involving the newspaper. The New York Times Co v. Sullivan.

Palin's lawsuit was the rare case of a libel suit against a newspaper going to trial. The case has been closely watched by press freedom groups, First Amendment lawyers and media organizations because of its potential implications for comprehensive legal protections for journalists and publishers who write about public figures.

Right-wing figures and Republican allies – including Donald Trump – have filed several lawsuits challenging the Sullivan Precedent for the effort to make it easier to attack hostile press organs and critical reporting.

In her testimony during the trial, Palin – the former governor of Alaska and John McCain's vice presidential candidate in the 2008 presidential election – said she felt “powerless” and lacked a platform to challenge the editorial.

“It was devastating to read another accusation, a false accusation, that I had something to do with the murder of innocent people,” she said on the witness stand.

However, she admitted that she regularly appeared on Fox News, at major political events and in her own reality TV series, as well as The Masked Singerwhat she described as “the funniest 90 seconds of my life.”

“If the intent was to defame, if the intent was to harm political rivals,” then why should Bennet admit the mistake, take responsibility and try to correct the record after publication, New York Times asked attorney David Axelrod in his closing argument.

“This was not a silent correction,” he said.

Palin appealed the jury's verdict a few weeks after the decision.

“The jury is sacrosanct in our legal system, and we have a duty to protect its constitutional role by, on the one hand, ensuring that the role of the jury is not usurped by judges, and, on the other, ensuring that juries are provided with the relevant evidence and are adequately instructed on the law,” the appeals court judges wrote Wednesday.