The defamation lawsuit filed in the federal Southern District Court of New York by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin against the New York Times has been dismissed.
Judge Jed Rakoff noted that Palin’s case failed to adequately make a showing of actual malice to support the public figure defamation claim. Significantly, the case may be ripe for appeal to the Second Circuit because the dismissal was with prejudice as it came after an evidentiary hearing on the issue of malice.
Details of the Case
This case stems from an opinion article posted in the New York Times after the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise. The piece originally associated a political mailer sent out by Palin to the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords. While Palin did send out a political mailer that identified political “targets” using crosshairs, clearly her rhetoric did not imply violence.
However, the opinion piece did more than just correlate Gifford’s shooting with one of Palin’s crosshairs, it directly linked the two. Additionally, the original piece incorrectly stated that there were faces of democratic opponents under the crosshairs in Palin’s controversial mailer.
Quick Fixes Save NYT
While the piece inaccurately described Palin’s mailer, correction were quickly issued by the Times editorial staff. First the fact that the crosshairs did not have faces underneath was corrected, then the link drawn between the shooting and mailer were removed.
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