Palin’s Arguments for New Trial Open on the Ides of March

Governor Palin will seek not only a new trial but also a new judge in her ongoing legal tussle with the New York Times, and will lay out her arguments for why by the Ides of March, a court filing on Monday disclosed. For the Alaskan, whose case for defamation against the Gray Lady was rejected from both the bench and the jury room last month, the filing on Monday offered a preview of what her team will argue in the next salvo of litigation that first began in 2018 and the timetable for what’s ahead. Mrs. Palin’s lawyers will file their arguments for why she is deserving of a fresh trial by March 15, with the Times’s response due two weeks later and Mrs. Palin’s side getting one more bite of the apple, so to speak, by April 5.It is the latest development in a case that began with a Times editorial linking Mrs. Palin to the violence against Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The case has emerged as a flashpoint in the fraught relationship between public figures and the press.Now Mrs. Palin’s cause is fueled by criticism of how Judge Jed Rakoff handled the case. At the center of her emerging argument for another trial is the way the last one ended. Judge Rakoff pre-emptively dismissed the case before the jury reached a verdict.The judge found that as a matter of law Mrs. Palin had failed to meet the “actual malice” standard required to prove defamation. If the jury dissented, he intended to override its conclusion. As it happened, judge and jurors agreed. After hearing their verdict, Judge Rakoff explained, “We reached the same bottom line, but on different grounds.” Those documents will extend and formalize arguments that Mrs. Palin’s lawyers made in a February 23 conference call with Judge Rakoff. In addition to asking that Judge Rakoff be removed from future litigation and for his verdict to be set aside, Mrs. Palin also requests the ability to interview jurors “concerning their receipt of push notifications during the trial,” telegraphing her concern that alerts about Judge Rakoff’s dismissal of the case could have shaped the final verdict. This request comes despite earlier assurances from Judge Rakoff that his law clerk interviewed jurors, who reported that they were unswayed by the ping concerning the very trial they were tasked with deciding.In that February 23 phone conference with Mrs. Palin’s attorneys, the Times reported that Judge Rakoff insisted, “I had zero communications with the media during the trial, none whatsoever,” indicating a potential avenue for disqualification Mrs. Palin’s team could pursue. Mrs. Palin’s attorneys are likely to want to conduct their own interviews given the trial’s unusual denouement. They are now set to argue that both judge and jury were compromised by Judge Rakoff’s stewardship of the verdict to such an extent that justice demands a new trial. For his part, Judge Rakoff expressed his intention to issue a written explanation of his decision to dismiss the case. Mrs. Palin’s filing could have been timed to preempt that document. Should Mrs. Palin once again fail to find relief from Judge Rakoff’s courtroom, an appeal to the riders of the Second Circuit would likely soon follow.

Palin’s Arguments for New Trial Open on the Ides of March

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