Jurors in Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against The New York Times say they got notifications on their phones that the case had been dismissed before reaching a verdict

• Jurors in Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit said they received notifications on their phones that the case was to be dismissed.
• The jurors said that the notification did not in any way affect their ruling in the case.

Jurors in Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against the New York Times revealed to the court's law clerk that they saw push notifications on their phones alerting them that the case was to be dismissed before they reached their verdict, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.

According to a notice filed to court by US District Judge Jed Rakoff, who oversaw the trial, jurors told the law clerk that the notifications did not affect their ultimate decision, in which they chose to rule against Palin.

The notice said that jurors "involuntarily" received these notifications and "repeatedly assured the Court's law clerk that these notifications had not affected them in any way or played any role whatever in their deliberations."

While jurors were still deliberating on Monday, Rakoff told attorneys in the case that he would dismiss the lawsuit. He said that after listening to over a week of testimony, he did not believe Palin had mustered enough evidence to prove that the New York Times and its top opinion editor, James Bennet, had acted with "actual malice," the legal threshold for defaming public figures, with the publication of an editorial in 2017 that Palin said defamed her.

Rakoff said he would allow the jurors to continue deliberating nonetheless. If they decided to hold the Times liable in the case, he said, then an appeals court could enter their verdict over his rather than go through a second trial.

The jurors came to their verdict a day later, agreeing with the judge: The Times, they decided, didn't libel Palin.

The former Alaska governor filed her lawsuit in 2017 over an editorial published that June titled "America's Lethal Politics." The piece followed the shooting of several Republican members of Congress by a man with a history of opposing their political positions.

The Times article, published in its opinion section, drew a link between the shooting and an earlier one, in 2011, where another man shot then-Democratic Rep. Gabriel Giffords in Arizona, wounding her and killing six others. According to the version of the editorial that was initially published, Palin incited that shooting because her political action committee posted an image on Facebook that put Giffords's district under crosshairs.

The Times corrected the article the next day, admitting that there was no established link between Palin's committee's post and the Giffords shooting. Palin filed her lawsuit two weeks later.

Rakoff had instructed jurors not to look at media about the case while deliberating. But, according to his filing, app push notifications informed them of his Monday decision anyway.

"These jurors reported that although they had been assiduously adhering to the Court's instruction to avoid media coverage of the trial, they had involuntarily received 'push notifications' on their smartphones that contained the bottom line of the ruling," he wrote.

Rakoff also pointed out that neither lawyers for the Times nor for Palin objected when he said he would render his decision while jurors were still deliberating. He nonetheless offered to host a call with both parties over how they wanted to proceed.

Palin has indicated she plans to appeal the lawsuit.