A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a $83.3 million jury award against President Donald Trump for defaming magazine writer E. Jean Carroll.
The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals said the jury award was “reasonable” given the evidence presented at trial.
“We hold that the district court did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury’s duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case,” the appeals panel of judges wrote.
The panel of three judges cited Trump’s repeated denials and public criticisms of Carroll, even after the first jury found his statements were defamatory, as a reason to uphold the punitive damages.
“He made three of these attacks within 48 hours of the verdict in Carroll … and launched similar attacks against Carroll in the days and weeks leading up to this trial,” the panel wrote, adding that “given this extraordinary and unprecedented conduct,” the award “was neither unpredictable nor unreasonable in relation to the actual harm that had occurred and ‘the harm likely to result.’”
Carroll, a former magazine columnist, alleged Trump raped her in a department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim. In a separate case, a jury in 2023 awarded Carroll $5 million after finding Trump sexually abused and defamed her. A federal appeals court upheld that verdict.
The case that the court upheld Monday stems from remarks Trump had made denying Carroll’s allegations in 2019. He was found liable for defamation in 2023, and a jury last year ordered him to pay $83.3 million in punitive and compensatory damages. Trump testified briefly during the trial.
Credit: cnn.com
