Sarah Palin’s eight-year-old defamation claims against The New York Times are being heard anew by a Manhattan jury this week, following their revival by an appeals court last year.
Lawyers for the one-time Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate, alongside the newspaper’s legal team, are expected to present testimony and exhibits detailing the creation and subsequent correction of a 2017 editorial. Palin asserts the publication defamed her by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting.
In his opening statement, attorney Shane Vogt told jurors that the newspaper had engaged in a “sickeningly familiar pattern” by targeting a popular Republican personality.
The Times admits it made an error, but attorney Felicia Ellsworth said in her opening that the newspaper “corrected the record as loudly, clearly and quickly as possible.”
She said the correction was posted within 14 hours, and jurors will have to conclude that the newspaper’s editors knew they were saying something false and said it anyway to reach a verdict against the Times and its former editorial page editor, James Bennet.
Palin sued the Times for unspecified damages in 2017, accusing it of damaging her career as a political commentator with the editorial about gun control published after U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, was wounded when a man with a history of anti-GOP activity opened fire on a congressional baseball team practice in Washington.
In the editorial, the Times wrote that before the 2011 mass shooting in Arizona that severely wounded former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six others, Palin’s political action committee had contributed to an atmosphere of violence by circulating a map of electoral districts that put Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.
In a correction, the Times said the editorial had “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting” and had “incorrectly described” the map.
The trial is occurring after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan restored the case last year.
In February 2022, Judge Jed S. Rakoff rejected Palin’s claims in a ruling issued while a jury deliberated. The judge then let jurors deliver their verdict, which also went against Palin.
In restoring the lawsuit, the 2nd Circuit said Rakoff’s dismissal ruling improperly intruded on the jury’s work. It also cited flaws in the trial, saying there was erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction and a mistaken response to a question from the jury.
