Trump Denied Bid for New Trial in E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case

Daniel Kreps
·3 min read
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A federal judge has rejected Donald Trump’s bid for a new trial in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him, keeping the former president on the hook for $83 million in damages.

In January, after years of legal action, a New York jury found that Trump repeatedly defamed her after she accused him of sexual assault. Trump’s lawyers appealed the decision — which called for $7.3 million in compensatory damages, $11 million in reputation repair damages, and $65 million in putative damages — and sought a new trial.

The retrial bid was rejected and the $83 million in damages were upheld Thursday by Judge Lewis Kaplan, who wrote in his denial of the Trump team’s appeal (via ABC News),  “Contrary to the defendant’s arguments, Ms. Carroll’s compensatory damages were not awarded solely for her emotional distress; they were not for garden variety harms; and they were not excessive. Mr. Trump’s malicious and unceasing attacks on Ms. Carroll were disseminated to more than 100 million people. They included public threats and personal attacks, and they endangered Ms. Carroll’s health and safety.”

In 2019, Carroll accused Trump of assault, alleging that the former president raped her in the dressing room of New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the Nineties. Originally, Carroll filed a defamation suit over statements Trump made about her in the aftermath of her accusation.

In 2022, she filed a separate lawsuit alleging additional defamatory statements by Trump, and a charge of battery under New York’s Adult Survivors Act. In the trial that took place last year, litigating her 2022 lawsuit, Trump declined to attend or even present a defense and was found liable on both counts.

Trump was initially ordered to pay Carroll $5 million last May, but a judge found that he continued to defame Carroll in rally speeches and online missives, resulting in the latest decision against him, which the jury made after only three hours of deliberations.

“I’m not going to waste a cent of this. We’re going to do something good with it,” Carroll said in January in an interview following her $83 million victory.

“This win, more than any other thing, when we needed it the most — after we lost the rights over our own bodies in many states — we put out our flag in the ground on this one. Women won this one. I think it bodes well for the future.”

Carroll’s team was happy with the ruling on Thursday. “We are pleased with though not surprised by the Court’s decision today denying Donald Trump’s motions for a new trial and judgment as a matter of law,” her attorney, Robbie Kaplan, said in a statement provided to Rolling Stone. “As the Court explained, it was entirely reasonable for the jury to award E. Jean Carroll $83 million in damages given Donald Trump’s continued defamation of Ms. Carroll during the trial itself, as well as his conduct in the courtroom where his ‘hatred and disdain [were] on full display.’”

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