ANOTHER GO

Sarah Palin Tries to Revive Her Libel Case Against the New York Times

Her lawyer was back in a federal appeals court on Monday, arguing for a 60-year-old Supreme Court ruling on libel cases to be overturned.

Sarah Palin’s lawyers were back in an appeals court on Monday, attempting to revive her libel case against The New York Times over an editorial that she says unfairly linked her political action committee to the 2011 Arizona shooting Gabrielle Giffords. Her lawyer, Shane Vogt, tried to argue for the overturning of a 60-year-old Supreme Court ruling that requires public figures prove “actual malice”—that is, show the defendant was aware that their statements were false—in order to win libel cases. But his argument got a lukewarm response from the three-judge panel, one of whom told Vogt he was “wasting time... by spending a lot of time on this question,” Politico reported. The panel did, however, appear to accept Vogt’s claim that the original judge didn’t consider some evidence at the trial, including the Times’ James Bennet testifying that he may have read earlier editorials that asserted there was no link between the Arizona shooting and Palin’s PAC. Palin lost her lawsuit last year when a judge found there wasn’t evidence of the Times intentionally publishing lies about her.