Writer E. Jean Carroll’s ongoing defamation trial against Donald Trump isn’t about whether the former president is liable but how much he has to pay up. So it’s important to know what the jury can consider in making that assessment. Against that backdrop, the judge asked the parties to file briefs addressing the following question:
If someone’s reputation in part of a community is injured, is the plaintiff or the injured party entitled to recover damages for that injury even if the reputation of the party in another part of the community is benefited?
Unsurprisingly, in competing briefs filed over the weekend, Carroll’s team said “yes” while Trump’s said “no.” Trump lawyer Alina Habba wrote that “the impact a defamatory statement had on a plaintiff’s reputation must be viewed wholistically.”
Joshua Matz, a lawyer for Carroll, countered that the law “does not authorize Mr. Trump to defame Ms. Carroll but then minimize the ensuing damages because he involuntarily inflicted a ‘benefit’ on her in the form of support from parts of the community who find his statements abhorrent (or who are otherwise predisposed to disbelieve his attacks).” If anything, Carroll’s lawyer wrote of Trump, “it is offensive for him to persist in his assertions that she should be grateful to him for defaming her.”
In the filing, Matz requested that the jury instructions reflect that any injury caused to Carroll’s reputation isn’t mitigated by any benefit to it in some parts of the community.
The jury was set to potentially hear Trump testify Monday, but the case was postponed, NBC News reported, after Habba said she wasn’t feeling well after having been exposed to Covid from one or both of her parents. Habba’s co-counsel also was feeling under the weather, and a juror was being tested for Covid as well. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Blog newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
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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