Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll won yet another round against Donald Trump this morning when the court granted partial summary judgment in her second defamation case against the former president.
In 2019, after E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her decades earlier in a department store dressing room, he called her a liar who was just trying to sell a “crummy book” and damage him politically as part of a Democratic Hoax. And he continued to make roughly the same statements at regular intervals for the past four years.
Carroll sued in New York state court in 2019, but that case spent several years in purgatory after first being removed to federal court by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, and then traveling to the Second Circuit and DC Court of Appeals to determine whether Trump’s statements implying that Carroll was a liar and too unattractive to sexually assault were part of his official presidential duties. (Turns out they were not.) In the meantime, Carroll sued Trump again in 2022, alleging sexual battery under New York’s newly enacted Adult Survivors Act, as well as defamation thanks to an October 2022 statement where Trump repeated his 2019 allegations, almost verbatim.
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“It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years,” he screeched on Truth Social in a 357-word rant about the pending litigation. “And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!”
This exercise of bad judgment cost him dearly, because Trump was no longer President in 2022, so there was nothing to stop Carroll’s second suit from going to trial. In May of 2023, a jury awarded Carroll $2 million on the battery claim and $3 million for the October 2022 defamation. Even as he vowed to appeal, Trump claimed victory, since the jury found him liable for sexual assault, but not battery. He followed up with a raft of motions premised on the theory that the jury’s finding that he had only managed to pin Carroll against the wall and forcibly penetrate her with his fingers — but not his penis — was some kind of vindication. Judge Lewis Kaplan, whom Trump and his legal team have managed to infuriate with three years of dilatory antics, denied all of these motions and branded Trump a digital rapist.
Carroll’s response was a good deal more strategic. She moved for partial summary judgment on a theory of collateral estoppel, since the jury found that the assault did occur and that Trump’s 2022 statement accusing her of perpetrating a hoax was defamatory. Trump’s 2022 defamation substantially repeated his 2019 statement, and so, Carroll asserted, the only issue for a second trial was damages accruing from the 2019 defamation.
For his part, Trump moved for summary judgment to cap the damage award in the upcoming trial, which is scheduled for January. He pointed to Carroll’s testimony on the witness stand that the 2022 statement caused harm which was “identical to — potentially even greater than” the damage occasioned by the 2019 statement. By this logic, the second jury was bound by its predecessor’s valuation of the 2022 defamation. But, as the court noted, issue preclusion applies to court or jury determinations, not testimony, and so the argument was inapposite.
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In the alternative, Trump claimed that Carroll’s damages in the upcoming trial should be reduced by $1.7 million to avoid double recovery. The first jury award was based in part on expert witness testimony about the cost of a reputation repair program, he reasoned, and Carroll has but one reputation to repair. Judge Kaplan found this argument equally unavailing, noting that the verdict sheet contained no information assigning a portion of the damages award specifically to reputation repair.
Carroll’s motion fared much better, with the court holding that the first jury’s findings of fact and liability are indeed the law of the case, and so the only issue for the jury is how big a check Trump will have to write:
Mr. Trump’s 2019 statements raise this identical issue. “The core of Ms. Carroll’s defamation claim [in this case] is that Mr. Trump lied in accusing her of fabricating her sexual assault allegation against him in order to increase sales of her book and for other improper purposes and that he thus caused Ms. Carroll professional and reputational harm as well as emotional pain and suffering.” The truth or falsity of Mr. Trump’s 2019 statements therefore depends – like the truth or falsity of his 2022 statement – on whether Ms. Carroll lied about Mr. Trump sexually assaulting her. The jury’s finding that she did not therefore is binding in this case and precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements.
It’s a devastating ruling, although it will presumably save the former president (or his Save America PAC) some cash. At least this time he won’t have to pay his lawyers to try to convince a jury that their client simply brags about grabbing women by the genitals, but doesn’t actually do it.
Silver linings!
Carroll v. Trump I [Docket via Court Listener]
Carroll v. Trump II [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.