Trump Appeals $83 Million Verdict in Carroll Defamation Case

In January, a panel of nine jurors ordered President Trump to pay Ms. Carroll $83 million in damages.

Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media after voting at a polling station in Palm Beach, Fla., on March 19, 2024. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump has filed an appeal seeking to overturn the verdict and the $83 million judgment against him in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, in which the former president was sued over statements he made denying her allegations of sexual assault.

Trump attorney John Sauer wrote in a notice of appeal filed on May 15 at the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, that the former president is appealing the tens of millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages levied against him.

President Trump is also appealing all other adverse orders, rulings, and decisions in the case that were included in both the Feb. 8 final judgment and the April 25 memorandum that denied his request for a new trial and rejected his contention that the outcome was tainted by extreme restrictions on his courtroom testimony and erroneous instructions to the jury.

Ms. Carroll had sued President Trump for defamation over statements he made denying allegations of sexual assault. At the close of his defamation trial in January, a panel of nine jurors ordered President Trump to pay Ms. Carroll $83 million in damages. It broke down as $18.3 million for compensatory damages—which include $11 million to fund a campaign to repair Ms. Carroll’s reputation and $7.3 million for emotional harm—as well as $65 million in punitive damages, according to the Feb. 8 final judgment that the former president is now appealing.

Another part of President Trump’s appeal targets U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s memorandum and opinion issued on April 25. In it, the judge wrote that President Trump’s request for a new trial was “without merit” for the various reasons outlined in Ms. Carroll’s motion of opposition, including that the court properly instructed the jury and did not abuse its discretion in limiting the former president’s testimony.

President Trump’s attorney wrote in the filing that the former president is appealing “all adverse orders, rulings, decrees, decisions, opinions, memoranda, conclusions, or findings preceding, leading to, merged in, or included within the Final Judgment, including the April 25, 2024 Memorandum Opinion (Doc. 338) denying Defendant’s post-trial motions.”

Ms. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

However, she told Fortune magazine on May 14 that the case against President Trump was “strong” thanks to the “amazing, incredible, unbelievably courageous E. Jean Carroll.”

President Trump has called the verdict “absolutely ridiculous” and a politically-motivated ploy to derail his 2024 presidential comeback bid.

Background

This legal saga stems from a defamation lawsuit Ms. Carroll filed over allegedly defamatory comments President Trump made about her in 2019 when she first publicly accused him of sexual assault.

In 2019, Ms. Carroll accused President Trump of having raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1995 or 1996.