In a decision this week amid further proceedings after this January’s jury judgment imposing $83.3 million in penalties on former President Donald Trump for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, federal Judge Lewis Kaplan put the ex-president and his team on blast for making arguments that Kaplan said flout “common sense.”
The idea was that some damages suffered by Carroll could potentially be traced to an initial news article that covered her account of Trump sexually assaulting her during the 1990s. Trump was trying in this latest stage of proceedings to get either a new trial or a dismissal of the case.
“It ignores the fact that those defamatory statements were viewed between at least 85 to 104 million times, whereas there is no evidence at all as to the dissemination of The Cut article to which defendant seeks to assign all of the damages suffered by Ms. Carroll and which was not even alleged to have been defamatory,” the judge wrote, referencing the Trump team’s idea.
“It ignores as well the fact that the jury was entitled to believe Ms. Carroll’s testimony as to the impact of the June 21 and 22 statements on her. And it ignores the lack of any persuasive legal authority supporting Mr. Trump’s contention. Indeed, the law is clear that when competing theories and evidence are presented at trial, the issue of causation ultimately is one for the jury, which the Court should not ordinarily disturb.”
“In short, the argument — which Mr. Trump previously made to the jury, conspicuously without success, and which defies common sense — does not warrant dismissal as a matter of law,” the judge continued. “Dismissal as a matter of law” was among the potential legal options the Trump team was pushing.
Kaplan’s decision leaves in place the $83.3 million in penalties on Trump, which he already covered with a bond amid further proceedings. Trump recently named Carroll again in angry public commentary, hearkening back to what initially helped spur these very proceedings.
