Are the Courts Likely to Sustain the $65 Million in Punitive Damages Awarded Against Trump in the E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case?

A jury just found Donald Trump liable for over $83 million in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Of that, about $65 million are punitive damages.

Are the punitive damages likely to be sustained if challenged (as they will be) judicially?

To begin with, there’s the question whether the compensatory damages will stand. If they are found to be excessive, then the punitive damages would likely be gone as well, and a new trial on both damages held. I don’t have an opinion on the excessiveness of the compensatory damages because I did not pay close enough attention to the evidence at this latest trial.

But the punitive damages question presents different issues. Apart from any state court review, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that punitive damages sometimes are unconstitutional under the due process clause and require independent review (one of the leading cases here is State Farm v. Campbell).

The purpose of punitive damages is to punish and deter, and wealthier defendants would likely need a higher punitive damage award to be deterred. Also, Trump appears to be a recidivist, continuing to defame Carroll, which would justify a higher award.

That said, the Supreme Court has said that the wealth of the defendant cannot justify an otherwise unconstitutional award, and that when substantial compensatory damages are awarded (as they were in this case), then a punitive award should be in a relatively low ratio to compensatory damages (like a 1:1 ratio, meaning damages in the $18 million range).

It’s fairly common for a jury to award very high punitive damages to a rich defendant who has engaged in egregious conduct, only to see the punitive award lowered either by the trial court or on appeal.

We’ll see what happens, but the full $65 million in punitive damages is uncertain to stand.

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“Conn. mayor wins do-over race after GOP seized on Democratic ballot-stuffing”

WaPo:

A Connecticut mayor whose September primary election win was invalidated after ballot-fraud allegations won a do-over primary Tuesday, months after his case became a flash point in conservative arguments about debunked theories of voter fraud.

Donald Trump barrels toward the Republican nomination and continues promoting debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him, he and his allies have seized on this case out of Democratic-leaning Bridgeport. They see the case — which resulted in a mayor formerly convicted of conspiracy winning a general election that had been voided by the courts — as evidence that Democrats are committing widespread fraud. Elections experts say those claims are baseless and that the Bridgeport case is unique.

“There is no indication to say that what took place in Bridgeport is happening nationally,” said David Levine, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. “But election deniers just need a toehold to get greater traction on a bigger claim. For those that want to make mountains out of molehills, it’s incumbent on them to bring the evidence to support those accusations.”

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“The California Supreme Court Replaces Gingles Prong One”

Jason D’Andrea and Bruce Wessel have posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum). Here is the abstract:

This Essay analyzes Pico Neighborhood Association v. City of Santa Monica, the California Supreme Court’s first decision interpreting the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 (“CVRA”).

This Essay explains the holding of Pico Neighborhood and the new prerequisite for suit that it establishes. It then addresses five topics related to understanding and applying the decision.


First, the opinion’s focus on the ability of candidates to win by a plurality of the vote is discussed, as it will be central to liability and remedy issues in future cases. When a majority of the vote is not required to win an election, smaller groups of minority voters below a majority are able to elect their preferred candidates. Second, and related to the first point, the importance of crossover voters in the California Supreme Court’s approach is addressed. Here, the majority opinion in Strickland is rejected, and, in essence, the dissent by Justice David Souter in that case is embraced. Third, we identify alternative electoral systems mentioned in Pico Neighborhood and the new judicial task of comparing existing at-large systems to alternative systems in the liability phase of the case. Fourth, the decision’s reference to Section 5 of the VRA is explored. Like the new test that is now a part of the CVRA, in historical Section 5 cases, existing electoral systems were compared to proposed systems. Finally, we offer an interpretation of the “ability to influence” prong of the CVRA, a statutory interpretation question the California Supreme Court decided not to address in Pico Neighborhood because it was not squarely raised in the case.

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“Your Guide to Four Emerging Threats to the Voting Rights Act”

Bolts:

After years of being whittled away by federal judges, the Voting Rights Act unexpectedly survived an existential threat in 2023 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld what’s left of the landmark civil rights law while striking down Alabama’s congressional map. 

“The court didn’t make it any easier to win voting rights cases,” redistricting expert Justin Levitt told Bolts at the time. “It just declined to make it much, much, much, much, much, much harder.”

But the reprieve may have been temporary, and winning voting rights cases may still get much harder this year. A series of cases are working their way through federal courts that represent grave threats to Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits denying the right to vote “on account or race or color,” language that extends into protection against racial gerrymandering. 

In these cases, conservatives are trying out a suite of new legal arguments, each of which would result in a dramatic narrowing in the scope of the VRA. The cases are still making their way through district and appellate courts, with some early rulings favoring conservatives, at times authored by judges nominated by Donald Trump. Many are expected to end up at the Supreme Court, where members of the conservative majority have already expressed skepticism at various aspects of the VRA. 

Judges will decide if critical protections afforded by Section 2 of the VRA remain applicable to the present, whether the law applies to statewide races and coalition districts, and even whether voting rights groups can ever bring a lawsuit under Section 2—a sleeper case that already detonated in an appeals court last fall. The most acute stakes concern the rules of redistricting, with officials in GOP-run states including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Texas proposing new interpretations that would fuel gerrymandering and undercut the voting power of communities of color. 

Here is your roadmap to four major legal threats that may further unravel the VRA in 2024, and what cases you should be watching….

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“‘Preposterous’: Federal judge decries efforts to downplay Jan. 6 violence, label perpetrators ‘hostages'”

Politico:

The longest-serving district judge on the federal bench in Washington, D.C., warned Thursday that false rhetoric about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — including the sorts of lies hurled by former President Donald Trump and some of his congressional allies — poses an ongoing danger to the nation.

Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee to the bench, said the “destructive” misinformation, spread by political leaders who have downplayed and misrepresented the attack, had become pervasive.

“In my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream,” Lamberth lamented in a seven-page public court filing.

Though he did not mention Trump by name, Lamberth specifically called out language used by Trump and, more recently, Trump allies like Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), describing Jan. 6 defendants as “hostages.”

“I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved ‘in an orderly fashion’ like ordinary tourists, or martyrizing convicted January 6 defendants as ‘political prisoners’ or even, incredibly, ‘hostages,’” he wrote. “That is all preposterous. But the Court fears that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.”

It was a remarkable jeremiad from a veteran jurist who has presided over dozens of Jan. 6 criminal cases and more than 10 trials. Lamberth issued his comments in connection with sentencing proceedings for James Little, a Jan. 6 misdemeanor defendant who has decried his case as a political prosecution and said the government is trying to suppress his free speech rights.

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