(RoyalPatriot.com )- Former Alaska Republican Governor Sarah Palin lost her civil libel lawsuit against The New York Times, but she’s not backing down from the fight just yet.
On Wednesday, a U.S. district judge said Palin’s legal team was planning to seek a new trial. The original trial was dismissed earlier in February.
During a hearing this week, Judge Jed Rakoff said the legal team representing Palin has plans to file a motion that would allow them to interview various jurors and also conduct a brand new trial in her case against The Times.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Palin’s team want Rakoff’s ruling to be reconsidered, and they want him disqualified from participating in any potential proceedings in the future.
Earlier in February, the jury ruled The Times wasn’t liable for publishing an editorial that incorrectly linked Palin — who was also once a candidate for vice president — to a mass shooting that occurred in Arizona. That particular incident is the one where Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords was seriously wounded when she was shot.
The reason why Palin’s lawyers are up in arms is that Rakoff took a rare move while the jury was in deliberations. While that was happening, Rakoff said the legal team for Palin didn’t provide any “legally sufficient evidentiary basis” for their case against The New York Times. Because of that, the judge said he would move to dismiss the case.
In a court filing that he made last week, Rakoff wrote said many of the jurors who were still deliberating had learned of the judge’s decision to try to dismiss the case before they made their final decision. This happened because they received smartphone push notification alerts while they were still deliberating.
In that filing, Rakoff wrote:
“The jurors repeatedly assured the Court’s law clear that these notifications had not affected them in any way or played any role whatever in their deliberations. Nevertheless, in an excess of caution, the Court hereby brings the foregoing facts to the parties’ attention … If any part feels there is any relief they seek based on the above, counsel should promptly initiate a joint phone conference with the Court to discuss whether any further proceedings are appropriate.”
This is apparently the exact path that Palin’s legal team intends to pursue. It’s hard to fathom how the jurors wouldn’t be influenced in any way by receiving information from the judge in the case they were deliberating on was going to dismiss the case.
Palin’s lawyers are arguing that the judge’s actions, which were certainly not the norm, influenced the jurors’ eventual decisions. This, in turn, means that their client wasn’t given a fair trial and should receive a new one — without Rakoff being involved in any way, shape or form.
The Times sent a statement to the Wall Street Journal this week. In it, they said they were “confident that the judge and jury decided the case fairly and correctly.”
