Palin Judge: Jurors Unaffected by Push Notifications

The judge who presided over the defamation case brought by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin against The New York Times reassured the court’s law clerk that jurors were "not affected" by push notifications they involuntarily received about the judge's statement on the case.

On Monday, Judge Jed Rakoff said while the jury was not in the courtroom that he had determined no reasonable jury would find that the Times or its editor acted with actual malice when it published the editorial in 2017, and said that he would dismiss the case regardless of the jury's decision due to Palin's legal team providing insufficient evidence to support their claims.

The jury said on Tuesday that they had reached a verdict, and found that the newspaper and the editor, James Bennet, did not defame Palin. Rakoff told the court in a note on Wednesday that multiple jurors, "at most three," told his clerks that they had involuntarily received push notifications on their phone after the judge made his statement.

The jurors "repeatedly assured the Court's law clerk that these notifications had not affected them in any way," the note read, according to The Independent.

"In an excess of caution, the Court hereby brings the foregoing facts to the parties' attention," Rakoff said in the written order. "If any party feels there is any relief they seek based on the above, counsel should promptly initiate a joint phone conference with the court to discuss whether any further proceedings are appropriate."

"I'm disappointed that the jurors even got these messages, if they did," Rakoff said about the notifications in an interview, according to Bloomberg. "I continue to think it was the right way to handle things."

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