Now Is the Time for Sarah Palin’s Libel Appeal

We wonder what Sarah Palin makes of that $787.5 million settlement in the Dominion Voting Systems libel case against Fox News. It’s been almost a year since she asked the riders of the Second Circuit to weigh her appeal in her libel case against the Times. After submitting the matter to a jury, the judge in the case, Jed Rakoff, turned around and announced in open court that he was going to rule for the Times no matter what the jury decided.The Times is calling Fox News’ settlement in its defamation case “a lost opportunity for a legal reckoning” over “misinformation that has poisoned many Americans’ trust in the democratic process.” The same could be said for Governor Palin’s case against the newspaper that boasts of carrying all the news that’s fit to print. Yet it’s taking the Second Circuit a maddening amount of time to get to the matter. The suit was filed in 2017 by Ms. Palin against the Gray Lady after the paper suggested that the Alert Alaskan had in effect incited the shooting incident that injured — and permanently disabled — Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people. The Times issued an editorial contending that one of Ms. Palin’s political committees had instigated the attack by circulating “a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.”The insinuation — penned by the Times’ editorial page editor, James Bennet — was, at least to us, as startling and as reckless as Fox News’ election coverage and particularly pointed in its hurtfulness. Yet it has been more than a year since Ms. Palin lost her case in federal district court. Judge Rakoff had dismissed the case at the outset, only to be overruled by riders of the Second Circuit and ordered to hold a trial.The behavior of the judge in the trial that ensued turned out to be what we called an exercise in truculence. When it looked like the jury might find for Ms. Palin, His Honor announced in open court, while the jury was out, that he was going to throw out any verdict the jury might bring in against the Times. Then he brought the jury in to, ostensibly, wish them a Happy Valentine’s day. He hinted that there might be news in the case but told the jurors not to read it.By that point, as we noted, the papers, including the Times, had already put out push notifications with the news of the dismissal, which some jurors confirmed having seen, according to Ms. Palin’s appeal. So the un-sequestered jurors returned the next day with what amounted to a gift to the Times. Judge Rakoff waved off the implications of the jurors seeing the news of his intent to rule for the Times. Will the riders of the Second Circuit agree? It is not only the jury’s decision and Ms. Palin’s appeal but the district court’s comportment itself that the Circuit might review. It’s possible, as we understand it, that the circuit riders could consider Ms. Palin’s case “de novo” — meaning that they need not give deference to Judge Rakoff’s conclusion that Ms. Palin failed to meet the standard for “actual malice.” The circuit riders get to decide that question by their own lights, with no preconceptions.The timing is certainly apt, if the Times’ own reporting on the Fox News settlement is any guide. For the settlement left unresolved “questions,” the Times reports today, “about whether federal courts’ interpretations of the First Amendment” — including the precedent in Sullivan v. New York Times — “made it impossible to hold anyone accountable for reckless and damaging lies.” Precisely the question the Circuit riders will tackle in Ms. Palin’s case.

Now Is the Time for Sarah Palin’s Libel Appeal

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