The short introduction from the 17,000-word Carroll v. Trump, decided today by Second Circuit Judges Denny Chin, Susan Carney, and Myrna Pérez:
In this case, after a nine-day trial, a jury found that plaintiff-appellee E. Jean Carroll was sexually abused by defendant-appellant Donald J. Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1996. The jury also found that Mr. Trump defamed her in statements he made in 2022. The jury awarded Ms. Carroll a total of $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
Mr. Trump now appeals, contending that the district court (Lewis A. Kaplan, Judge) erred in several of its evidentiary rulings. These include its decisions to admit the testimony of two women {Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff} who alleged that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted them in the past and to admit a recording of part of a 2005 conversation in which Mr. Trump described to another man how he kissed and grabbed women without first obtaining their consent. Mr. Trump contends that these and other asserted errors entitle him to a new trial. {[As to those other errors], Mr. Trump argues that the district court unreasonably restricted his defense by precluding (1) evidence that some of Ms. Carroll's legal fees were being paid for by one of Mr. Trump's political opponents and (2) portions of a transcript made by Ms. Carroll of a 2020 interview between Ms. Carroll and Ms. Stoynoff that, Mr. Trump argues, suggests that Ms. Carroll coached Ms. Stoynoff on her testimony. Mr. Trump also asserts that the district court erred in preventing him from cross-examining Ms. Carroll on three matters: her out-of-court claim that she possessed Mr. Trump's DNA; her decision not to file a police report; and her failure to seek surveillance video footage from Bergdorf Goodman.}
On review for abuse of discretion, we conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings. Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial….
I have little to say about the substance of the analysis, since it has to do with evidentiary issues that I generally don't follow; the opinion is available here, and is generally quite readable. (No part of the opinion deals with the substantive law of libel, which I do follow.) But here's what struck me as an interesting and relatively self-contained analysis as to the litigation funding question:
