While his administration attempts to reshape the country through the courts, Donald Trump just suffered his latest legal loss on his personal docket, when an appellate panel rejected his attempt to overturn the $83.3 million in defamation damages won by writer E. Jean Carroll at one of her civil trials against Trump.
The news comes as the president’s personal lawyers just told the Supreme Court that they’re challenging the appeals court’s separate previous decision to uphold the $5 million in damages Carroll won against Trump in a related case for sexual abuse and defamation.
In Monday’s ruling, the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit concluded that the five-figure damages “were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case.” The three-judge panel also rejected Trump’s arguments that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling saves him and that the district judge who presided over the case made erroneous legal rulings.
The civil litigation stems from Trump’s responses to Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1996. Trump had said she fabricated her claims for personal and political reasons.
In the first of two related cases that went to trial, a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million. The 2nd Circuit previously upheld those damages in the case in which Trump has a Supreme Court petition due Nov. 10.
Monday’s decision involves the second of the two cases that went to trial, where a jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million for statements Trump made when he was still in office. The panel rejected his argument that the damages were excessive, reasoning that there was “ample evidence that Trump was recklessly indifferent to Carroll’s health and safety.” The panel noted that his statements “had a domino effect,” as Carroll “was subjected to ongoing and prolific harassment as a result of these statements, including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury.” Trump’s conduct “supports a significant punitive damages award — it involved malice and deceit, caused severe emotional injury, and continued over at least a five-year period,” the panel concluded. The three judges on Monday’s panel were appointed by former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama. In the $5 million case that’s further along on appeal, Trump had asked the full 2nd Circuit to review the case before taking it to the Supreme Court. The full appeals court declined to do so, but two Trump appointees dissented while suggesting that Trump was treated unfairly. In his forthcoming petition to the justices in that case, his lawyers might seek to highlight that dissent to a likeminded Supreme Court majority. That’s all to say that in both Carroll cases, the appeals court’s rejections of Trump’s arguments might not be the final word. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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