A federal judge in New York on Wednesday denied former President Donald Trump’s request for a new trial in the defamation and battery case brought by E. Jean Carroll that resulted in a $5 million damage award.
Trump had sought a new trial after a New York jury in May found him liable for sexually assaulting the former Elle magazine columnist in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s, then defaming her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie.”
Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the request, saying, “The jury in this case did not reach ‘a seriously erroneous result.'”
“Its verdict is not ‘a miscarriage of justice,'” the judge said in his ruling.
“Now that the court has denied Trump’s motion for a new trial or to decrease the amount of the verdict, E. Jean Carroll looks forward to receiving the $5 million in damages that the jury awarded her,” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement.
In rendering its verdict in May, the jury held Trump liable for battering Carroll, but did not find that he raped her as alleged, instead holding him liable for sexual assault.
Jury members awarded Carroll damages of $2 million in compensatory damages and $20,000 in punitive damages for battery, as well as $1 million in damages, $1.7 million for reputation repair, and $280,000 in punitive damages, for defamation.
Carroll initially sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he denied her claims by saying she was “not my type” and suggesting she fabricated her accusation in order to increase sales of her then-forthcoming book.
That case has been tied up in legal technicalities, but a Justice Department ruling last week may clear the way for it to proceed.
