Court refuses to answer if Trump can be sued for comments he made about rape accuser E. Jean Carroll while in office
KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images
- The DC Court of Appeals issued a ruling on E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit against Donald Trump.
- The court said it could not answer whether federal law protects Trump from being sued in the case.
- The case has now been sent back to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
The question of whether Donald Trump can be sued for comments he made denying a rape allegation while president is still up in the air after a Thursday ruling from the DC Court of Appeals.
Longtime "Elle" advice columnist E. Jean Caroll sued Trump for defamation in his third year in office, when he loudly denied her allegation that he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Both Trump and the Department of Justice tried to get him removed from that case, arguing that a federal law called the Westfall Act shields him from being sued.
The Westfall Act protects public employees from being sued for actions on the job, inserting their employer as the defendant instead. If Trump were to be removed from the lawsuit, the lawsuit would be dismissed since the federal government can't be sued for torts like defamation.
In some ways, the decision was a draw. Trump's team wanted the court to rule trump was not acting in the scope of his employment, while Carroll's team wanted the court to say he was. And the court said neither, determining instead that there wasn't enough information in the record to answer the question at hand.
However, the court generally agreed with Carroll on how the federal courts should analyze whether Trump was acting "within the scope of his employment" when he made the comments about her.
The lawsuit has been in limbo while multiple courts have weighed in on whether the Westfall Act applies to this case or not.
Initially, US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled in Carroll's favor, saying that Trump's statements to the press denying Carroll's allegation, a rape she says happened well before his presidency, were not a part of his duties as commander in chief and therefore the Westfall Act doesn't apply.
Seth Wenig/AP
But when Trump appealed that decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, that court struck down Kaplan's ruling. That court determined that Trump was a government employee but voiced confusion about whether his comments were made within the scope of his employment under District of Columbia law.
The Second Circuit sent that question to the DC Court of Appeals, which returned its answer on Thursday.
The case has now been sent back to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The court could issue a new ruling or send the case back to the lower court.
Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, seemed to view the decision as a win.
"Now that the D.C Court of Appeals has clarified the certified question before it, we are confident that the Second Circuit will rule in President Trump's favor and dismiss Ms. Carroll's case in its entirety," she said.
An attorney for Carroll declined to comment.
Thursday's ruling does not apply to Carroll's second lawsuit against Trump, which is scheduled to go to trial April 25 in Manhattan federal court.
Carroll filed a second lawsuit against Trump last year, when New York passed a law temporarily allowing the filing of sexual assault claims in cases where the statute of limitations had expired. Carroll's second lawsuit also includes a defamation claim for comments Trump made after he left the White House.
Contributer : Business Insider https://ift.tt/LaEtoF0
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Friday, April 14, 2023
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