Writer E. Jean Carroll can pursue $13m defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump, says judge
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A jury awarded Ms Carroll US$2 million (S$2.7 million) for battery and US$3 million for defamation.
PHOTO: AFP
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NEW YORK - A judge said on Tuesday that Ms E. Jean Carroll, the New York writer who won a US$5 million (S$6.7 million) jury verdict against Donald Trump in May, can pursue a separate US$10 million (S$13.4 million) defamation lawsuit against the former US president.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan ruled in favour of the former Elle magazine columnist, after Trump had argued that the defamation case must be dismissed because jurors had concluded he never raped her.
A spokesman for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba was in Miami, where he pleaded not guilty in a separate case
On May 9, a Manhattan jury ordered Trump to pay Ms Carroll US$2 million for battery and US$3 million for defamation, after she accused him of raping her in a department store dressing room
The battery claim came under a New York law, the Adult Survivors Act, giving adults a one-year window to sue over sexual abuse that occurred long ago even if statutes of limitations have expired.
Ms Carroll then sought to amend her separate defamation lawsuit filed in 2019 over a similar denial by Trump that June, where he told a White House reporter that the rape never happened, and that Ms Carroll was not his “type”.
The revision sought to incorporate the jury verdict, as well as insults Trump lobbed a day later in a CNN town hall, where he called Ms Carroll’s account “fake”, and labelled her a “whack job”. REUTERS
