A federal judge in New York dealt former President Donald Trump’s legal effort a blow by rejecting his request for a new trial and upholding a $5 million jury verdict in a civil case brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll.
Judge Lewis Kaplan on Wednesday denied Mr. Trump’s motion for a new trial or to decrease the jury’s award of $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages to Carroll, who accused the former president of sexual assault and defamation.
The case relates to a civil lawsuit Ms. Carroll brought against Mr. Trump in 2022, accusing him of battery and defamation. She alleged that Mr. Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in 1996 and later defamed her in 2022 when he called the incident a hoax.
In May 2023, a nine-member jury handed Ms. Carroll a win in the suit, although it found that she did not prove that Mr. Trump raped her but instead determined that he had sexually abused her. The jury awarded Ms. Carroll $2 million in damages for sexual abuse and around $3 million for defamation.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, appealed the May decision, asking the judge to lower the jury award for damages to less than $1 million or order a new trial.
The Trump attorneys argued that the $2 million award for damages was excessive as the jury had concluded that Mr. Trump had not raped Ms. Carroll at Bergdorf Goodman’s Manhattan store decades ago.
In his 59-page ruling entered on July 19 (pdf), Judge Kaplan said he had considered all of the arguments raised by Mr. Trump’s legal team and “found them all unpersuasive.”
“The jury in this case did not reach a ‘seriously erroneous result.’ Its verdict is not a ‘miscarriage of justice,’” the judge wrote, while denying Mr. Trump’s motion for a new trial or a reduction in damages to Ms. Carroll.
Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday’s decision.
However, Mr. Trump’s attorneys filed a notice of appeal on July 19 (pdf) against the $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages, and against all adverse rulings found in Judge Kaplan’s decision earlier that day.
Ms. Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, said in a statement that Ms. Carroll hopes to collect the $5 million and looks forward to pressing forward with a separate lawsuit against Mr. Trump, which has a trial date set for Jan. 15, 2024.
