A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s request for a new trial in the defamation and battery case brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll, HuffPost reports on Wednesday, July 19.
The jury had found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. The verdict was delivered on May 9, 2023, when the jury held Trump liable for battery but did not find him guilty of the rape allegation.
They awarded Carroll $2 million in compensatory damages and an additional $20,000 in punitive damages for battery. Furthermore, she was awarded $1 million in damages, $1.7 million for reputation repair, and $280,000 in punitive damages for defamation.
Carroll, who is 79 years old, accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Subsequently, Trump dismissed the incident as a hoax in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform.
Trump’s legal team argued for a reduction in damages, claiming that the $2 million awarded for sexual abuse was “grossly excessive” since the behavior in question could have constituted “groping of Plaintiff’s breasts through clothing or similar conduct, which is a far cry from rape.”
They contended that this behavior did not cause any diagnosed mental injury to Carroll [3]. However, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan refuted Trump’s argument, emphasizing that New York’s penal law defines rape more narrowly than commonly perceived.
The judge asserted that the evidence convincingly established that Trump had deliberately and forcibly penetrated Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, inflicting immediate pain and lasting emotional and psychological harm.
Therefore, he ruled in favor of the jury’s decision to award Carroll $3 million for defamation. In his 59-page decision, Judge Kaplan firmly stated that the May 9 verdict was neither a “seriously erroneous result” nor a “miscarriage of justice.”
He dismissed Trump’s appeal for a reduction of damages to less than $1 million, upholding the jury’s decision. Trump’s legal team indicated that they would be appealing the verdict, though his lawyer did not immediately respond to media requests for comment. Likewise, Carroll’s lawyers did not immediately comment on the court’s decision.
The trial, which took place in May 2023, was the result of a lawsuit Carroll filed against Trump in 2022. The suit was made possible by a new law in New York that allows adult sex assault victims to file claims that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations.
Carroll had initially sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he denied her allegations by stating she was “not my type” and suggesting she fabricated the accusation to boost sales of her forthcoming book.
Despite Trump’s attempt to seek a new trial, Judge Kaplan’s ruling solidifies the jury’s decision and further intensifies the legal battle between Trump and his accuser, E. Jean Carroll.