|
Post by Admin on Jan 25, 2022 18:28:33 GMT
The manager of an exclusive New York City restaurant insisted it was focused on the safety of its guests, after the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin dined there despite not being vaccinated against Covid-19. New York City laws require proof of vaccination for indoor dining. The city government said Palin should “follow the rules just like everyone else”. Palin tested positive repeatedly on Monday, delaying the start of her defamation trial against the New York Times in Manhattan federal court. Palin, who also tested positive in March last year, has said she will not get vaccinated. In December, she told a conservative audience in Phoenix: “It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot. I will not do that. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids either.” In a statement, Luca Guaitolini, manager of Elio’s, the restaurant on the Upper East Side, responded to the news Palin was seen eating there on Saturday. “We are taking this isolated incident – and unfortunate oversight – very seriously,” Guaitolini said. “Elio’s adheres to and believes in the vaccine mandate, and all it is doing to protect our staff, regulars and the dining public.” Guaitolini said he was not working on Saturday. He told the Times first-time diners were checked but Palin dined with an unidentified “regular”. “She probably just walked in and strolled over” to the table, Guaitolini said. “We are trying to get to the bottom of this.” In his statement, he said: “My focus right now is on the safety of my staff who worked the floor that night, and on our guests.”
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Feb 15, 2022 22:10:57 GMT
A federal court jury has rejected former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s libel suit against The New York Times, concluding that the newspaper is not legally liable for a 2017 editorial that she claimed unfairly linked her to a mass shooting six years earlier. The Manhattan jury’s unanimous verdict came following a seven-day trial and just one day after the judge handling the case, Jed Rakoff, indicated that he planned to throw out Palin’s suit because the 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee had failed, in his judgment, to demonstrate actual malice on the part of the Times or its former editorial page editor James Bennet. Rakoff’s decision to announce his ruling on Monday in the middle of deliberations by the nine-person jury prompted criticism from some legal experts, but after the jury’s foreperson read the “not liable” verdict in court on Tuesday, the judge said in court that he remained confident the jurors had not learned of his decision. Before he sent the jurors home, Rakoff informed them about his ruling, which he said they were likely to see in the media. “We’ve reached the same bottom line,” he said. “You decided the facts. I decided the law.” Palin is expected to appeal, but legal experts said the dual blows to her case — the judge’s ruling coupled with the jury’s verdict — significantly narrowed her chances of eventually getting the case reinstated. Her legal team’s only hope might be to show that jurors somehow got word of Rakoff’s decision. “They’ve lost the argument that the judge’s ruling … had any impact, unless they can show the jury was tainted,” University of Baltimore law professor Kimberly Wehle said. “Appeals courts don’t like to take cases away from juries.” A spokesperson for the Times praised the jury’s decision, which came in the first libel suit against the Times to reach a jury in nearly two decades. “The New York Times welcomes today’s verdict,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades-Ha said. “It is a reaffirmation of a fundamental tenet of American law: Public figures should not be permitted to use libel suits to punish or intimidate news organizations that make, acknowledge and swiftly correct unintentional errors. It is gratifying that the jury and the judge understood the legal protections for the news media and our vital role in American society. We also want to thank the jurors for their careful deliberations in a difficult area of the law.”
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Feb 16, 2022 22:19:10 GMT
Washington Times – Jury rejects Sarah Palin’s libel claim against The New York Times "Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lost her libel lawsuit against The New York Times on Tuesday when a jury rejected her claim that the newspaper maliciously damaged her reputation by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting. "A judge had already declared that if the jury sided with Palin, he would set aside its verdict on the grounds that she hadn’t proven the paper acted maliciously, something required in libel suits involving public figures." Palin, a onetime Republican vice presidential nominee, sued the newspaper in 2017 claiming it had damaged her career as a political commentator and consultant with an editorial about gun control published after a man opened fire on a Congressional baseball team practice in Washington. U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, was wounded in the shooting, committed by a man with a history of anti-GOP activity. In the editorial, the Times blamed overheated political rhetoric. It likened the shooting to a 2011 massacre in Arizona that left six dead and former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords severely wounded, and said Palin‘s political action committee had contributed to an atmosphere of violence at the time by circulating a map of electoral districts that put Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs. In a correction shortly after the editorial was published, The Times said it had “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting” and that it had “incorrectly described” the map; a tweet read, “We got an important fact wrong.” At the trial, Palin cast herself as a victim of biased journalism by a left-leaning, elitist media institution eager to embarrass a pro-gun rights politician.
|
|