--- title: "Jury Awards David Sabatini $6 Million in Defamation Case Against Kristin Knouse" description: "The ousted biologist won a defamation verdict against the younger scientist who accused him; Whitehead had already left the case" author: "Nate Ledger" published: 2026-10-16T20:56:45.876Z modified: 2026-10-17T07:35:45Z url: https://rews.cc/a/jury-awards-david-sabatini-6-million-in-defamation-case-agai-013bf5 language: en tags: ["mtor", "me-too", "biology", "mit", "whitehead", "science"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Jury Awards David Sabatini $6 Million in Defamation Case Against Kristin Knouse *The ousted biologist won a defamation verdict against the younger scientist who accused him; Whitehead had already left the case* By Nate Ledger · October 16, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/jury-awards-david-sabatini-6-million-in-defamation-case-agai-013bf5 ## In brief - A Suffolk County jury found Kristin Knouse defamed David Sabatini and interfered with his ability to earn a living - Knouse was ordered to pay $6 million plus interest; Bill Ackman puts the total with interest near $10 million - A 2021 Whitehead investigation found their relationship violated the institute’s workplace relationship policy - The Whitehead Institute was dropped from the case earlier, leaving Sabatini and Knouse as the only parties - Knouse’s lawyer Ellen Zucker says her client will appeal A Suffolk County jury on Friday found that Kristin Knouse, an MIT biologist, defamed her former boss and ex-partner David Sabatini and interfered with his ability to earn a living. It ordered her to pay him $6 million plus interest, [as the *Boston Globe* reported](https://bostonglobe.com/2026/10/16/metro/david-sabatini-verdict/). Five years ago Sabatini was one of the best-known biologists in the country. He discovered mTOR, a protein that regulates cell growth, and the work gave researchers important insights into aging and cancer. People talked about him for a Nobel Prize. Then he was forced out of MIT and the Whitehead Institute, and since then he has spent much of his time in court. The facts the two sides agree on are thin. Sabatini says he and Knouse, then a Whitehead fellow, started a consensual sexual relationship in 2018, and that it ended when he began pursuing another woman. Knouse told investigators the relationship was coercive. She said Sabatini held a position of influence over her and had fostered a toxic, sexually charged work environment. In 2021 an internal investigation found that the relationship had violated Whitehead’s strict policy on workplace relationships. ![Two glass test tubes holding teal liquid stand in a dark rack, their bent upper ends intertwined in a knot, illustrated on textured cream paper.](https://rews.cc/img/f8435d949576330c2bdf015df92913b8f23b2fe0.webp) That finding and Friday’s verdict answer different questions, which helps explain how both can stand. A strict relationship policy can be broken by a relationship that both people say they wanted. The rule is about the reporting line, not consent. A defamation claim asks something else: did a person say false things about you that damaged you? The jury of [seven women and six men](https://www.statnews.com/2026/10/16/david-sabatini-wins-sexual-misconduct-lawsuit-metoo/), as STAT and the Globe describe it, decided that Knouse had. Bill Ackman, who financially backed Sabatini’s comeback, says the panel had seven men and six women. That small discrepancy aside, [Ackman wrote](https://x.com/BillAckman/status/2111246367750283532) that the verdict was unanimous and that the jury rejected all of Knouse’s claims, including quid pro quo sexual harassment and a sexually hostile work environment. ## How the institute left the case The structure of the lawsuit is worth spelling out. Sabatini sued the institute after he was removed from his lab. Knouse countersued, saying he had abused his position of power. The institute was eventually dropped from the case. [*Science* covered one of his losses](https://www.science.org/content/article/biologist-david-sabatini-loses-again-legal-fight-against-whitehead-institute) against Whitehead along the way. That left two individual scientists facing each other at trial, which is how this case was [put to the jury](https://rews.cc/a/jury-weighs-defamation-claim-and-countersuit-in-whitehead-sc-1a7101) this week. It began with an employer’s investigation into its own lab and ended with a damages award against one assistant professor. ![Two people sit at a courtroom table with a gavel while a wheeled building rolls toward a brightly lit doorway.](https://rews.cc/img/60cb23851ab1fa1a9a91d153b06171fe56494bba.webp) The damages are for a career, and that career did take a hit. In early 2022 about 200 graduate students, faculty and alumni at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine walked out when they learned Sabatini might be hired there. In 2023 Ackman, the New York hedge fund billionaire, and an anonymous donor pledged $25 million over five years to get him back into research, and Sabatini took a job at a lab in the Czech Republic. Ackman says that with interest the award comes to nearly $10 million. If he is right, roughly $4 million of what Knouse owes is simply the cost of the years the case took. ## The courtroom “We are so happy that we got David Sabatini’s good name back,” Lisa Arrowood, his lawyer, told the Globe. “Now he can be regarded as the brilliant scientist he is.” Sabatini [posted](https://x.com/DMSabatini/status/2111251861177295196) that “Today I smiled for real for the first time in more than 5 years,” thanked the jury, judge, court officer, clerk and his legal team, and added: “I truly wish the best for everyone involved.” The two sides even disagree about what happened after the verdict. Minutes after it was read, Knouse and members of her legal team sat crying and embracing in the emptied courtroom. Arrowood said a longtime member of Knouse’s lab who had testified for her grew visibly angry and “body checked” someone on Arrowood’s team. “I’ve been doing this for 44 years and I’ve never seen anyone react like this,” she said. “It was incredible.” Ellen Zucker, Knouse’s attorney, called that “completely ludicrous,” and said Knouse’s friends and colleagues “were standing with her and none of them body-checked anybody.” ![Three people sit close together on a courtroom bench, one with an arm around another, facing an empty judge’s bench in a textured teal and coral illustration.](https://rews.cc/img/52f8ad195b367e038c9bf7faa397e9f7f3e8b69d.webp) Zucker said Knouse intends to appeal. She regrets the verdict but not the decision to fight. “So, we’re not going to stop,” she said. She pointed out that “Multiple women came into court to speak about David Sabatini’s conduct towards them,” and called the outcome “a sad day” for them and for “the good women and men who investigated this.” She described the verdict as a symptom of a culture that doesn’t believe women and doesn’t hold men to account, and compared it to Cornell, where law enforcement at first declined to bring criminal charges after a former student accused several fraternity members of gang rape. “We as a country have often excused conduct that objectifies, harms women,” she said. Knouse is now an assistant professor of biology at MIT and a faculty member of its Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. The Globe calls the case an unusual #MeToo dispute because the accused ended up with a large judgment. The best-known comparison is Johnny Depp’s defamation suit against Amber Heard over an op-ed that suggested he had physically abused her. That jury gave Depp $10 million, but it also found that he had defamed Heard and awarded her $2 million. In this case Knouse got nothing on her claims, and Whitehead, whose policy and investigation started all of this, was gone from the case before the jury was asked anything.