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Donald Trump will likely seek to either reduce or overturn the $83.3 million E. Jean Carroll defamation award, an attorney has said.
On January 26, a New York jury made the award after Trump repeatedly denied sexually assaulting Carroll in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s.
Litigation attorney Colleen Kerwick said that Trump's first option will likely be to file post-trial motions to reduce the verdict.
"Judge Lewis Kaplan has the authority to enter a conditional order of remittitur, compelling E. Jean Carroll to choose between a reduction of the verdict and a new trial if his court determines that the award is intrinsically excessive," she said.
For the award to be deemed excessive, Kaplan would have to find the amount greater than the amount a reasonable jury could have awarded.
"If that Motion for Remittitur is denied, it would still provide his attorneys with an opportunity to expand the Record on Appeal as nothing new can be introduced at the Appellate level—the Appellate Court's task is to look over Judge Kaplan's work and determine if he abused his discretion or erred as a matter of law in his rulings," Kerwick said.
Overturning the verdict may prove difficult, Kerwick added.
"Judge Kaplan is very well respected by the Appellate Court and has himself sat by designation on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals so it is an uphill battle to overturn him."
Another approach may be to challenge the Adult Survivors Act, through which Carroll took her case.
The act allowed people in New York to file a lawsuit against an abuser or institution that protected the abuser—no matter when the assault took place, even if it's outside the statute of limitations.
"I would expect the appeal to hinge on whether the Adult Survivors Act violates the due process clauses of the constitution. Once a statute of limitations has run, the defense of that statute is a vested right and should not be taken away through legislative action," she said.
"If the sexual assault verdict falls on this ground, it would follow as a natural corollary that the defamation verdicts fall with it. It may be time for him to retain a more seasoned Appellate Counsel as sometimes it is the best lawyer, versus the interests of justice, which prevails."
She said Trump, frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has already challenged the act at the district court level and he may lose at the Second Circuit.
"This is a question that the U.S. Supreme Court may take up," she added.
Trump, who had denied wrongdoing, was ordered to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in compensation and damages after a New York jury on Friday found that he had defamed her again in a second civil case.
In an earlier case, a separate jury concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll in a Manhattan department store during the 1990s, then defamed her character when she went public with the accusation. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages, but the former president described the verdict as part of "the greatest witch hunt of all time." Trump continued to criticize Carroll publicly, after which the New York writer launched a second defamation case.
On Friday, Trump was instructed to pay Carroll an additional $18.3 million in compensation along with $65 million in punitive damages. Reacting to the judgment on X, formerly Twitter, Carroll shared a New York Times article about her victory and wrote: "ELATION!!!!"
Trump expressed his anger at the court's decision on his Truth Social website, posting: "Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party." He added: "Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!"
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About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more