Donald Trump’s request to have a brand new trial in his $83m defamation case with author E Jean Carroll, who accused him of sexual assault, was denied by a federal courtroom.
Decide Lews Kaplan of the US District Courtroom for the Southern District of New York rejected the movement on Thursday after Mr Trump had sought a recent trial.
In Might 2023, a jury discovered Mr Trump chargeable for sexually abusing Ms Carroll. Then, earlier this yr, a jury decided that Mr Trump had defamed Ms Carroll, with $65m in punitive damages and $18m in compensatory damages.
In response, Mr Trump posted a $91.6m bond to attraction the decision towards him.
However the courtroom denied Mr Trump’s request within the newest ruling with Decide Kaplan rejecting 4 components of the argument put ahead by the previous president’s attorneys.
Mr Trump’s attorneys had argued that the courtroom might solely award punitive damages to Ms Carroll if Mr Trump was motivated solely by a need to injure her.
“The Courtroom rejects that argument basically for the explanations acknowledged by Ms. Carroll in her opposition,” the choose wrote.
Mr Trump additionally argued that he deserved a brand new case Ms Carroll had to supply “punitive damages by clear and convincing proof,” which the choose additionally refuted.
“Thus, the New York legislation binding this Courtroom is that the usual of proof of punitive damages in defamation instances is the preponderance of the proof,” he added. “There was no error within the Courtroom’s cost to the jury on this level.”
The courtroom additionally refuted Mr Trump’s declare that the damages award was “extreme.”
“Opposite to the defendant’s arguments, Ms Carroll’s compensatory damages weren’t awarded solely for her emotional misery; they weren’t for backyard selection harms; and so they had been, not extreme,” Decide Kaplan wrote. The choose wrote that Mr Trump’s remarks defaming Ms Carroll had been disseminated to greater than 100 million folks.
“They included public threats and private assaults, and so they endangered Ms Carroll’s well being and security,” Decide Kaplan wrote. “The jury was entitled to conclude that Mr Trump derailed the profession, popularity, and emotional well-being of certainly one of America’s most profitable and outstanding recommendation columnists and authors — to which she testified repeatedly — and award her$18.3 million in compensatory damages.”
Decide Kaplan additionally pushed again on questions of constitutionality.
“Removed from being purely ‘defensive,’ there was proof that Mr Trump used the workplace of the presidency — the loudest ‘bully pulpit’ in America and presumably the world — to challenge a number of statements castigating Ms Carroll as a politically and financially motivated liar, insinuating that she was too unattractive for him to have sexually assaulted, and threatening that she would ‘pay dearly’ for talking out,” the choose wrote.
Robbie Kaplan, Ms Carroll’s lawyer who bears no relation to the choose, praised the ruling.
“We’re happy with although not shocked by the Courtroom’s determination at this time denying Donald Trump’s motions for a brand new trial and judgment as a matter of legislation,” she mentioned in a press release. “Because the Courtroom defined, it was fully affordable for the jury to award E Jean Carroll $83 million in damages given Donald Trump’s continued defamation of Ms Carroll throughout the trial itself, in addition to his conduct within the courtroom the place his ‘hatred and disdain [were] on full show.’”
The case ruling comes the identical day that the US Supreme Courtroom is listening to a case about whether or not Mr Trump has immunity from felony prosecution in relation to Particular Counsel Jack Smith’s case towards Mr Trump relating to his makes an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.