E. Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial starts on Tuesday. After accusing Carroll of lying about being sexually abused in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman’s in the mid-1990s, Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump. A jury had previously convicted him guilty of the charge last year. “Carroll I,” as it has been titled, was the first of two defamation claims launched against Trump; however, Trump’s attempts to have it dismissed on technical legal grounds initially postponed the case’s jury trial. However, Carroll I made it through a difficult appellate process and lived to see another day. It’s now prepared for testing.
Additionally, E. Jean Carroll’s 2019 filing, Carroll I, has turned into a bit of a legal layoff. This is due to the fact that the presiding federal judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, declared in September that Trump is unable to maintain that he did not slander Carroll due to the jury’s decision in Carroll’s other defamation lawsuit, which was brought in 2022 and is known as “Carroll II.” As a matter of fact, Carroll I’s jury’s only remaining decision is how much to compensate Carroll for the harm she endured as a result of Trump’s slander of her during his presidential campaign in 2019. To be completely honest, Carroll and I are close friends. No matter how close we are, my legal perspective is grounded in the case and the facts.
A brief summary of the two cases is provided below:
Carroll I:
filed by Carroll in November 2019 in response to remarks made by then-President Trump that year that were deemed defamatory, following Carroll’s public admission of having been sexually assaulted by him in the middle of the 1990s. Under a federal statute known as the Westfall Act, the Barr Justice Department entered the case on behalf of Trump because he was president at the time of the defamation and because then-Attorney General William Barr sided with Trump, claiming he was acting within the scope of his office when he made the defamatory statements. Carroll I would have been fired and Trump would not have been subject to Carroll’s civil claims if the DOJ’s replacement had been effective. Kaplan,
, on the other hand, dismissed Trump’s claim. Ultimately, the DOJ—led by Attorney General Merrick Garland—reversed course and concluded that Trump was speaking the truth about Carroll in 2019 in his personal capacity and not for the benefit of the US government. Following that, the DOJ withdrew its replacement in the case, letting Trump to handle his own defense. Carroll is requesting an undisclosed sum of punitive damages in addition to $10 million for damages to her reputation.
Carroll II:
filed in late 2022 in response to remarks made by Trump that year that were deemed defamatory. Carroll II also contained a sexual assault allegation made in accordance with the New York Adult Survivors Act. Carroll II went to trial in May of last year, and after only roughly three hours of deliberation, the jury found Carroll not guilty on all counts as Carroll I was wending its way through the appellate court system. The jury concluded that Trump had lied and acted maliciously when he made the defamatory comment about Carroll in 2022. Carroll was also judged to have been sexually abused by Trump by the jury. Carroll received a $5 million award for damages, which included $2.02 million for her battery claim and $2.98 million for other compensatory and punitive damages.
In essence, the court decided that Trump’s liability in his second trial (Carroll I) is controlled by the fact that a jury of his peers has already found that he lied in his 2022 defamatory statement about Carroll, and that the 2022 defamation is essentially the same as the 2019 defamation. This implies that the jury’s decision this week will solely concern the amount of damages that Trump must reimburse Carroll.
Lawyers refer to the legal doctrine that permits this Carroll I simplification as “collateral estoppel,” or “issue preclusion.” It’s the notion that parties are bound by the initial ruling on a matter and are not allowed to re-litigate it once it has already been litigated and a final judgment has been entered. In his partial summary judgment ruling in Carroll’s favor, Kaplan stated that “the jury considered and decided issues that are common to both cases.” Because a jury in Carroll’s first trial found Trump guilty of defamation and sexual abuse, he is therefore unable to raise a defense in his second defamation trial to relitigate these claims.
Trump has already made an effort to persuade Kaplan to limit Carroll’s damages to the $5 million Carroll II verdict from the previous year. He contended that the verdict on the amount rendered by the first jury ought to bind this week’s second panel. Trump, according to Kaplan, was attempting to “mix apples with oranges,” thus he rejected that action.
To put it briefly, Trump’s exposure of damages doesn’t seem good at all. Professor Ashlee Humphreys, Carroll’s damages expert witness, had already testified in the writer’s initial trial, and the jury had considered her testimony to be convincing and reliable. Following the Carroll II trial last year, Humphreys has also provided expert testimony in a highly publicized defamation lawsuit involving Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss against former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani was found guilty of slander in that trial for $148 million. Trump attempted to silence Humphreys, but Kaplan also refuted that attempt.
To exacerbate things for Trump, he keeps disparaging Carroll in court, seemingly not having learned the lesson from their first legal dispute. He posted 31 posts in roughly 30 minutes on his social media account, Truth Social, just a few days ago. The shared remarks, video snippets from interviews, and social media posts that denigrated and insulted Carroll were not written by Trump. Trump has assaulted Carroll on television and even while the campaign road, demonstrating that he is not satisfied to let others criticize her. Trump even shared on social media on Tuesday morning, prior to his arrival at the federal courthouse, what
It seems to be another perhaps disparaging remark regarding Carroll. The media has extensively reported his disrespectful behavior, so there’s a good chance that potential jurors have also heard about and witnessed his repeated defamation of Carroll, which poses its own set of difficulties.
Trump is said to have traveled to New York on Tuesday, where he plans to testify in Carroll I on his own behalf. Remember that he was a no-show when he was supposed to testify in Carroll II. To be honest, even if he showed there, it would probably be a complete and total disaster for him. During the closing arguments of the New York attorney general’s civil fraud trial, we saw Trump’s rendition of “testifying in his own defense.” It obviously didn’t help his case that he went on a meandering tirade, verbally abusing Letitia James and complaining that he was the real victim in that instance. Trump’s attorney received a complaint from Justice Arthur Engoron, the presiding judge, accusing him of lacking client control.
The former president could face disdain if he pulls any pranks in front of Kaplan, who manages an extremely tight ship. There is no room for dramatization or theatrics from Trump in Carroll I; in Kaplan’s own words, “no do-overs allowed.” This implies that Trump’s presence at the trial will almost certainly result in the jury awarding that verdict with additional zeros.