Jury Finds NY Times Defamed Ex-Alabama Player, Awards $9.25M

Jury Finds The New York Times Defamed Former Alabama Basketball Player, Awards $9.25 Million

A federal jury in Tuscaloosa, Alabama found The New York Times Company liable for defamation and false light invasion of privacy against Kai Spears, a former University of Alabama walk-on basketball player, and awarded him a combined $9.25 million across four separate damages lines.

Information last verified on August 28, 2026.

Status: A jury reached its verdict on August 20, 2026, and the verdict form was entered on the court's docket on August 27, 2026. The day after the verdict, on August 21, 2026, the court granted in part and denied in part The Times's motion for judgment as a matter of law. As of August 28, 2026, no final judgment has been entered on the docket. Post-trial motions and a possible appeal remain available before any payment becomes due.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers a case litigated in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, applying Alabama defamation and false light law under diversity jurisdiction. Fault standards, presumed and punitive damages rules, and statutory caps vary by state. For a broader look at how these claims work outside Alabama, see our defamation laws by state hub.

What Happened

The case is Spears v. The New York Times Company, No. 7:23-cv-00692-ACA, filed May 30, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, Western Division, and assigned to Judge Annemarie Carney Axon. The docket describes the case as a diversity action for libel, assault, and slander.

The dispute traces back to a January 15, 2023 shooting near the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa that killed Jamea Harris. According to contemporaneous news coverage of the criminal case, two other men were later charged in connection with that shooting. Spears was never charged, and the separate criminal proceedings are not the subject of this civil verdict. In March 2023, The New York Times published an article, titled on the court's verdict form as "A Fourth Alabama Player Was at a Deadly Shooting, in a Car Hit by Bullets," that Spears says placed him at the scene of that shooting. Spears was a walk-on member of the Alabama basketball team, not one of the players later connected to the case by investigators. News organizations covering the trial's outcome, including CBS News and The Washington Post, reported that The Times later acknowledged confusing Spears with another member of the program's staff and published an editor's note only after Spears sued.

Trial began in early August 2026 and ran nine days. According to the court's minute entry, the final trial day, August 20, 2026, included the judge's instructions, closing arguments from both sides, jury deliberations, one jury question that the court answered, and then the verdict itself, followed by polling each juror individually and dismissing the jury. The court reporter for that session was Stone Arledge.

One day earlier, on August 19, 2026, The Times had filed a motion for judgment as a matter of law under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50, the mechanism a defendant uses to ask a judge to rule in its favor on some or all claims without sending them to the jury, or to override an unfavorable verdict afterward. On August 21, 2026, the court issued a text order granting that motion in part and denying it in part, referencing arguments made on the record on August 19, 2026. The public docket text does not identify which specific claims, questions, or damages categories were affected by that ruling.

The jury's completed verdict form, along with the final jury instructions and the jury's single written question, were formally entered on the docket on August 27, 2026, a week after the verdict was actually reached. Court records mark those documents as "deemed filed" on August 20 and August 21, 2026, meaning the entry date on the public docket reflects administrative processing rather than when the documents were created in the courtroom.

What the Jury Actually Found

The jury used a 15-question special verdict form covering two separate legal claims: defamation (Count One) and false light invasion of privacy (Count Two). Special verdict forms like this one require jurors to answer each element of a claim individually, rather than issuing one general verdict, which is why the document on the docket runs five pages.

On Count One, defamation, the jury answered yes to each of the following:

• Question 1: that Spears proved by a preponderance of the evidence that The Times published materially false statements about him in the article.
• Question 2: that the false statement conveyed a defamatory meaning when read in context by an ordinary reader of average intelligence.
• Question 3: that The Times was negligent in publishing the defamatory statements.
• Question 4: that Spears proved he suffered actual harm because of the publication.
• Question 5: that Spears proved, by clear and convincing evidence, that The Times published the defamatory statement with actual malice, meaning it knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

Because the jury answered yes to Questions 1 through 4, it filled in Question 6, total compensatory damages, at $250,000. Because it also answered yes to Question 5, it proceeded to Question 7 and set total presumed damages at $500,000. Presumed damages are damages the law allows a jury to award for reputational harm without requiring the plaintiff to itemize a specific dollar loss.

On Count Two, false light invasion of privacy, a separate tort from defamation, the jury again answered yes across the board:

• Question 8: that The Times intentionally publicized false information about Spears.
• Question 9: that Spears proved, by clear and convincing evidence, that The Times knew at the time of publication that the information in the article was false, or acted with reckless disregard about whether it was false, another actual-malice finding, this time specific to the false light claim.
• Question 10: that Spears proved, by clear and convincing evidence, that The Times knew when it published the article that doing so would place him in a false light, or acted with reckless disregard as to that risk.
• Question 11: that the false information placed Spears in a false light in the public eye, and that the false light would be highly offensive to a reasonable person in his position.
• Question 12: that the false light caused Spears harm.

Following those answers, the jury set total compensatory damages on the false light count at $1 million on Question 13. Question 14 asked for nominal damages only if the jury had written $0 for compensatory damages but still found Spears failed to prove a specific dollar amount; the verdict form shows that line was filled in and then struck through and initialed by the jury before it was left as a nullity, consistent with the jury having already entered a compensatory figure on Question 13. Question 15, total punitive damages, was set at $7.5 million.

Those four dollar amounts add up to the $9.25 million total that has been widely reported:

The breakdown matters because the two largest lines, the $1 million compensatory figure and especially the $7.5 million punitive figure, sit entirely on the false light count rather than the defamation count. Roughly 81 percent of the total award is punitive damages tied to false light, not defamation damages. The jury signed the form "So say we all," dated August 20, 2026, and the form was later stamped filed by the clerk's office on August 27, 2026.

What the Law Actually Says

Defamation under Alabama law generally requires a plaintiff to prove that the defendant published a false statement of fact about him, that the statement was defamatory, that the defendant was at least negligent in publishing it, and that the plaintiff suffered damage as a result. The verdict form's Questions 1 through 4 track those elements directly.

Presumed and punitive damages, however, are treated differently. Under the constitutional rule from Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., states may not allow a defamation plaintiff to recover presumed or punitive damages, on a matter of public concern, without a separate showing that the defendant acted with actual malice, meaning it knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth, proven by clear and convincing evidence rather than the lower preponderance standard used for basic liability. That is why Question 5 on the verdict form required the jury to make a specific, heightened finding before it could award the $500,000 in presumed damages on Question 7. This requirement applies regardless of whether a plaintiff is later found to be a public or private figure; the verdict form in this case does not show the jury being asked to classify Spears as a public or private figure, and this article does not assert that either classification was decided.

False light invasion of privacy is a distinct tort from defamation, even though the two often arise from the same publication. Rather than focusing on reputational harm from a false statement, false light asks whether a defendant publicized information that places a person in a light that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, with knowledge of or reckless disregard for both the falsity of the information and the fact that it would create a false impression. That is why Questions 8 through 12 ask different questions than Questions 1 through 4, even though both counts arise from the same March 2023 article. Alabama's false light instructions, as reflected on this verdict form, required actual malice, the clear-and-convincing knowledge-or-reckless-disregard standard, as an element of the claim itself in Questions 9 and 10, not only as a gateway to enhanced damages.

Punitive damages, which the jury awarded solely on the false light count, are intended to punish and deter rather than compensate for a specific loss. Alabama has a punitive damages statute, Ala. Code Section 6-11-21, that caps punitive damages in most civil actions, with different limits and exceptions depending on the type of case. This article does not state the statute's current dollar caps or exceptions, because the operative statutory text could not be independently confirmed against Alabama's official legislative code portal for this article; readers who want the current caps and any applicable exceptions should consult the Alabama Legislature's code of Alabama directly, or a licensed Alabama attorney. Whether and how that statute applies to this particular verdict is a legal question this article does not resolve.

What Happens Next

Several procedural steps remain available before this case reaches a final, collectible outcome. The court's August 21, 2026 order already granted The Times's Rule 50 motion for judgment as a matter of law in part and denied it in part, but the docket entry does not specify which portions of the verdict that ruling affects, and no further order interpreting or implementing that ruling had appeared on the docket as of August 28, 2026.

The Times may file additional post-trial motions, including a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law or a motion for a new trial under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59, and it may separately ask the court to reduce the damages award, a request known as remittitur, on the theory that the award is excessive or that a statutory cap applies. Spears, for his part, could oppose any such motions. Once the district court resolves any remaining post-trial motions and enters a final judgment, either side would have the right to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. This article does not predict how the court will rule on any pending or future motion, whether a statutory cap will reduce the award, or how an appeal, if filed, would be decided.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The headline number here, $9.25 million, is the sum of four separate jury findings, and the breakdown changes what the case actually represents. A reader who stops at the total might assume this was primarily a defamation verdict with an unusually large damages award. The verdict form shows something different: the defamation count produced a comparatively modest $750,000 combined, while the false light count, built on a separate finding that The Times knew or recklessly disregarded that its article would place Spears in a false light, produced $8.5 million, including the $7.5 million punitive figure that makes up the bulk of the total. That distinction is likely to matter a great deal in whatever post-trial and appellate proceedings follow, since punitive damages are the category most often targeted by statutory caps, remittitur motions, and constitutional excessiveness challenges.

The case has also drawn attention within the journalism and media law community. Multiple outlets reporting on the verdict, including a New York Times article about its own case, noted that this appears to be the paper's first loss in a defamation suit litigated in the United States in more than 50 years, a characterization this article attributes to that reporting rather than stating as independently verified fact. Whatever significance that history carries, it does not change the procedural reality documented above: a jury has spoken, but the docket does not yet show a final, enforceable judgment.

Readers researching how a similar dispute would play out in a different state should keep in mind that fault standards, presumed damages rules, and punitive damages caps are not uniform nationwide. Alabama's neighbor states and jurisdictions like California's defamation and slander laws apply their own combinations of these rules, and a case with these facts could come out differently, procedurally or financially, if it had been filed elsewhere. Punitive and exemplary damages caps in particular vary widely and can dramatically change a headline verdict number after trial, as this site has covered in the Texas court's reduction of the exemplary damages awarded against Alex Jones in the Sandy Hook cases.

This article is provided for general legal information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It describes publicly filed court records as of the date noted below and does not predict the outcome of any pending motion or appeal. If you are involved in a defamation, false light, or media law dispute, consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction.

Related articles

• Alabama Defamation Laws: Libel, Slander & Suing
• Defamation Laws by State
• California Defamation Laws
• Texas Court Caps Alex Jones's Sandy Hook Exemplary Damages at $1.5M

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Last updated: 2026-08-28. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-08-28.