Why Donald Trump Is Likely to Lose Any E. Jean Carroll Appeal

Former President Donald Trump will likely lose any appeal in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case because he failed to contest her claim of reputational damage, a legal expert said.

On January 26, a jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million following Trump's 2019 allegation that Carroll invented her accusation that he had sexually assaulted her.

Judge Lewis Kaplan registered the judgment on February 8, giving Trump 30 days to file an appeal, which he has said he intends to do. To do so, he must post the full $83.3 million in court or a bond valued at that amount.

Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington D.C., told Newsweek that Trump didn't do enough to contest Carroll's claim that her reputation was ruined by his denial of her allegations.

"Carroll's lawyers presented expert testimony regarding the amount of money that will be required to restore her reputation," Saltzburg said. "Trump's lawyers didn't do much, if anything, to counter that testimony."

He said that the jury awarded "a little short of $20 million" in compensatory damages as a result.

Newsweek sought email comment from Trump's lawyer on Friday.

Salzburg said that punitive damages, designed to punish a defendant, generally follow the compensatory damages.

"The punitive damage award is a multiple of a little more than three times the compensatory award, and appellate courts generally regard that type of multiple as reasonable," he said.

Throughout the case, even after the May ruling, Trump has been adamant that he is innocent of the allegations. He remains the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

In October, Kaplan refused to accept Trump's proposed expert witness on compensatory damages, saying the man didn't have enough experience. Kaplan also criticized Trump's attorneys for not having an alternative expert prepared in time.

Salzburg said that Trump's case was not helped by his repeated denials of Carroll's allegations during the trial.

"Even during the trial, Trump appeared to continue to repeat things that were inconsistent with what a jury had found in the first Carroll trial despite the federal judge's admonition that he could not relitigate issues decided in that trial," he said.

Kaplan's February 8 order states that Trump is to pay Carroll "for compensatory damages [other than for the reputation repair program] in the amount of $7,300,000.00; Plaintiff E. Jean Carroll has judgment for compensatory damages [for the reputation repair program only] in the amount of $11,000,000.00; and Plaintiff E. Jean Carroll has judgment for punitive damages in the amount of $65,000,000.00, each as against the defendant Donald J. Trump for an aggregate sum of $83,300,000.00."

The case arose from statements the former president made in 2019 when denying allegations that he sexually assaulted the former Elle columnist in the mid-1990s. A separate jury in May found the former president liable for sexual assault, and Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in damages for comments he made about her in 2022.