NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. jury on Monday resumed deliberations in a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times by Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate, in a case seen as a test of longstanding protections for American media.
Palin is suing the newspaper and its former editorial page editor James Bennet, arguing that a 2017 editorial incorrectly linked her to a mass shooting six years earlier that wounded Democratic U.S. congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
Jurors deliberated for about 2-1/4 hours on Friday without reaching a verdict. The trial before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan federal court is in its eighth day.
After deliberations resumed on Monday, a lawyer for the Times expressed concern to Rakoff that the conservative activist group Project Veritas had uploaded video depositions of two witnesses who testified at the trial.
Rakoff said the online posting would be a problem only if jurors disobeyed his order not to look at such material.
It is rare for a major media outlet to defend its editorial practices in court, as the Times had to do in this case.
Palin had said that if she lost at trial, her appeal might challenge New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing the “actual malice” standard for public figures to prove defamation.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Will Dunham and Noeleen Walder)
