Sarah Palin Gets Trial Date in New York Times Defamation Suit

(Bloomberg) -- Former Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and the New York Times are headed for trial over her claim that the paper libeled her in an editorial that linked her to the 2011 shooting of former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords.

In a ruling Friday in federal court in Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff rejected both sides’ request for a ruling in their favor in the three-year-old case without a trial.

He dismissed the former Alaska governor’s argument that she shouldn’t have to prove that the Times had acted with “actual malice” when it published the editorial in 2017. And he rejected the newspaper’s argument that the lawsuit should be thrown out because Palin couldn’t prove actual malice.

The editorial tied the Gifford shooting to a map, issued by Palin’s political action committee, that put cross-hairs over the congresswoman and 19 other Democrats.

Rakoff noted that under a landmark Supreme Court decision, public officials must show actual malice -- defined as the knowing and reckless disregard for the truth -- to prove libel. The editor responsible for the editorial, James Bennet, had ignored colleagues who raised concerns about linking the crosshairs map to the shooting, the judge said.

When viewed “in a light most favorable” to Palin, “a rational finder of fact” could find actual malice, the judge wrote. On other hand, he noted, there is also “considerable evidence” that Bennet “simply drew the innocent inference” that the map might invite violence.

Pandemic permitting, the trial is set to start on Feb. 1.

The case is Palin v. The New York Times Company, 17-cv-04853, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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