A New York appeals court on Monday ruled that the $83.3 million awarded to E. Jean Carroll for Donald Trump’s defamatory comments about her after she accused him of rape was warranted, given the “extraordinary and egregious” facts of the case.
In a 70-page, unsigned decision upholding the massive judgment, three justices for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan did not err in trial rulings challenged by Trump.
The court also found that Trump had failed to make a case for the appeals court to revisit its previous ruling rejecting his presidential immunity claims because he raised them too late.
Trump’s lawyers had partly argued that the July 2024 Supreme Court decision granting the president sweeping legal protections should get him off the hook in the case.
“As we have explained, ‘it would be absurd that a party who has chosen not to argue a point on a first appeal should stand better as regards the law of the case than one who had argued and lost,’” Monday’s decision read.
“Trump had the opportunity and incentive to raise this challenge in his initial appeal and failed to do so; hence, he may not do so now.”
After deliberating for less than three hours, the Manhattan jury that weighed the damages decided on the figure in January 2024.
The judgment encompassed $7.3 million for emotional harm suffered by Carroll stemming from two June 2019 statements made by Trump during his first term, which Kaplan previously ruled were defamatory, and $11 million for reputational harm.
It also included a whopping $65 million in punitive damages.
Carroll’s lawyers asked the jury to come up with a large enough number that would stop Trump from continuing to repeat statements about Carroll found to be defamatory, which he had done before, during, and after a separate May 2023 trial at which he was found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a Midtown department store in the 1990s and defaming her after his first term.
Carroll first sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after she publicly levied rape allegations and he said she was a liar and “not my type.”
The former Elle advice columnist filed a second lawsuit in 2022 following the passage of New York’s Adult Survivors Act. She was separately awarded $5.5 million in that case.
Attorneys for Carroll and Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This story will be updated.
