By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Donald Trump cannot argue to a jury assessing damages at the writer E. Jean Carroll's upcoming defamation trial that he did not rape her in the mid-1990s, based on another jury having found that he only sexually abused her, a U.S. judge has ruled.
In an order on Saturday night, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan granted Carroll's request to block the defense from arguing that the jury reached its conclusion because it did not believe Carroll's rape claim.
The jury last May ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million over their alleged encounter in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room, which Trump says never happened, and for defaming her in 2022.
In the scheduled Jan. 16 trial, a different jury will consider how much Trump should pay Carroll for defaming her in 2019, when he was still president and the former Elle magazine columnist discussed the encounter in her memoir.
Trump's lawyers said the first jury's finding undermined Carroll's claim that he acted with malice by maintaining that he did not know Carroll, 80, and that she concocted the rape claim to sell her book.
But the judge said the jury's finding that Trump forcibly and without consent penetrated Carroll's vagina made her rape claim "substantially true under common modern parlance," even if it did not fit the definition of rape under New York law.
Kaplan said it would waste time for jurors at the upcoming trial to consider how Trump penetrated Carroll, when the only issue is damages for defamation.
Trump's lawyers and a spokeswoman did not immediately respond on Monday to requests for comment.
Carroll is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages. She is expected to testify, and Trump is a possible trial witness.
Trump is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
He has pleaded not guilty to 91 criminal charges in four indictments, including two cases claiming he tried to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.
The case is Carroll v. Trump, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 20-07311.