Sarah Palin’s Defamation Suit Against Is Dismissed
Earlier this month, Judge Rakoff had ordered the author of the editorial to testify in an unusual evidentiary hearing, saying
that a central question he would consider when weighing The Times’s motion was whether Ms. Palin’s defamation complaint contained “sufficient allegations of actual malice.”
The “actual malice” standard for defamation holds that public officials have to show
that news outlets knowingly published false information or had acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth
“Negligence this may be; but defamation of a public figure it plainly is not.”
In the lawsuit, which was filed in June, Ms. Palin contended
that a Times editorial that was published roughly two weeks earlier had linked her to a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona even though the news organization knew the connection was false.
A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin
against , saying Ms. Palin’s complaint failed to show that a mistake in an editorial was made maliciously.
“What we have here is an editorial, written and rewritten rapidly in order to voice an opinion on an immediate event of importance, in which are included a few factual inaccuracies somewhat pertaining to Mrs. Palin
that are very rapidly corrected,” Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan said in his ruling.
The editorial suggested a connection between a map of targeted electoral districts circulated by Ms. Palin’s political action committee and the 2011 mass shooting by Jared L. Loughner
that severely wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords.