February 24th, 2017

Melania Trump’s Lawsuit and Tax Returns

The other day I ripped Melania Trump‘s lawyers for stupidly claiming — in a defamation lawsuit against those that called her an escort while she was a model — that she had lost her once-in-a-liftime opportunity to capitalize on being the most famous women in the world for the next few years.

Personally, I thought the lawyers had committed legal malpractice in having done so, as it exposed her to a (well-deserved) torrent of scorn and derision.

She has now amended the lawsuit to take out the offending material.

But you know what is left? She still claims economic loss, and that is the subject of today’s post. Because if you claim economic loss, then one thing you can bet your last dollar on is that the defendants will say, “prove it!”

And part of that proof will be her tax returns, so that competing expert economists can do an evaluation of what she was making before (and how she was doing it), and how (if at all) it was affected.

First, the nuts and bolts of the claim from the Amended Complaint:

33. The defamatory statements in the Article have caused Plaintiff damages, including to her reputation and to her business interests and prospective economic opportunities, as well as causing significant humiliation in the community and emotional distress.

So she has not only claimed a per se injury for being called a prostitute, she alleges damage to her business interests and prospective economic opportunities.

Now tax returns, in New York, are jealously guarded by the courts. A party seeking to compel their production must make a strong showing of overriding necessity.

Melania Trump’s case is in New York County, the First Department, but all four of New York’s appellate departments have a high bar to hurdle.

But at least some of her returns, it seems, will meet that burden. And how much of her interests are intermingled with her husband’s? Nobody knows, but any intermingling at all could subject his returns (or parts of them) to discovery.

In one of the most oft-cited cases on the subject in the First Department, the court reversed a trial court justice that had granted the disclosure of tax returns in a partnership dispute. In Gordon v. Grossman the court held that “It was an improvident exercise of discretion to compel disclosure of the defendant’s tax returns. Because of their confidential and private nature, disclosure of tax returns is disfavored.”

And in Matthews Indus. Piping Co., Inc. v. Mobil Oil Corp., the lower court denied the defendants request to peak into the plaintiff’s returns and the First Department affirmed that decision. The court wrote that “The disclosure of tax returns is disfavored due to their confidential and private nature. Consequently, a party seeking to compel their production must make a strong showing of overriding necessity.”

Similar language comes from the Second Department, where the rule is that “A party will not be required to produce income tax returns in a particular action unless the record presents a strong necessity for such disclosure in order for the party to prove its cause of action or defense.” In Active Fire Sprinkler v. American Home, that court held that there must be “some showing that the particular information in tax returns has some specific application to the case.

Now here’s the kicker: Few people will want to donate money for any kind of legal defense fund, if one is needed. Because who wants to get in bed with the kind of d-bag that would write crap like that without evidence? (I have no idea if there is insurance coverage for this.)

But remember Peter Thiel funding the Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) sex tape lawsuit against Gawker?

Might there be some people willing to pony up money to see this matter go through discovery just to get to those tax returns?

Even if the returns are subject to a confidentiality agreement, all bets are off in a trial that takes place in open court.

Conclusion: Melania Trump has exposed herself, and potentially her husband, to having her tax returns revealed in discovery.

The only way out of this for her to drop her claim of economic loss entirely.

February 22nd, 2017

Saving TechDirt

As regular readers know, I’ve twice been sued for defamation over my reporting and opinions from this blog.

When Joseph Rakofsky sued me (and so many others) for reporting on his dreadful attempt to defend a murder case in his first ever trial, TechDirt was there to shout in our defense.

When Dr. Michael Katz sued me for reporting that a Queens judge repeatedly called him a liar in open court, TechDirt was once again there to scream from the rooftops.

Now it’s my turn to holler for TechDirt, as it’s very survival may hinge upon raising funds needed to defend itself from a defamation claim.

TechDirt, which gets 1.5M visitors a month, does original reporting and commentary about changes in government policy, technology and legal issues.

The blog is well written, well-researched, with just the right amount of snark to make reading that’s both enjoyable and informed even if the subject isn’t one you’d normally read.

So they’ve have been sued. For writing about who “invented” email.

Shiva Ayyadurai claims he invented email. And he didn’t seem to appreciate TechDirt’s Mike Masnick of calling him a fraud for making that claim.

As per a Fortune article on the suit:

Ayyadurai claims that a series of posts on TechDirt amount to libel—in part because the posts call Ayyadurai a “fake email inventor” and a “fraudster” and calls his claims to have invented the technology “bogus.”

Apparently, Ayyadurai created a program that he entitled “EMAIL” around 1978 or 1979. But, according to TechDirt, he merely creating code for one program, and that:

“does not, in any way, establish him as “the creator” of “the” electronic mail system — merely an electronic mail system — and hardly the first one. I could write some sort of email management software tomorrow and copyright that… and it would no more make me an “inventor” of email than Ayyadurai.

TechDirt’s site references NetHistory for the story of how email was actually created. There is no mention of Ayyadurai, as the foundation had apparently already been laid before Ayyadurai created his program.

Email is much older than ARPANet or the Internet. It was never invented; it evolved from very simple beginnings.

Indeed, the core element of email, the idea by Ray Tomlinson to use the @ symbol, was described merely as a “nice hack” when it was first used in 1972, years before Ayyadurai named his program:

We needed to be able to put a message in an envelope and address it. To do this, we needed a means to indicate to whom letters should go that the electronic posties understood – just like the postal system, we needed a way to indicate an address.

This is why Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing email in 1972. Like many of the Internet inventors, Tomlinson worked for Bolt Beranek and Newman as an ARPANET contractor. He picked the @ symbol from the computer keyboard to denote sending messages from one computer to another. So then, for anyone using Internet standards, it was simply a matter of nominating name-of-the-user@name-of-the-computer. Internet pioneer Jon Postel, who we will hear more of later, was one of the first users of the new system, and is credited with describing it as a “nice hack”. It certainly was, and it has lasted to this day.

At one point in 2014, the Huffington Post wrote a multi-part story about Ayyadurai being the inventor of email. While there’s no doubt that Ayyadurai did create an email system, and did obtain a copyright for his particular code, that didn’t make him the inventor of email as you know it. So says TechDirt in its analysis of the article, concluding that the Post stories ignored the fundamental difference between a copyright on the particular code and a patent on the concept:

Copyright was not, and has never been “the equivalent of a patent.” Copyright and patents are two very different things. Copyright protects specific expression. Patents protect inventions. That’s why copyright protected only the specific code that Ayyadurai wrote, rather than the concept of email.

Techdirt acknowledges that Ayyadurai came up with some cool improvements, such as using the shortened word email in place of electronic mail, and making the full address book part of the email system. But that simply comes under the classification of standing on the shoulders of those that came before you:

Ayyadurai has built up his entire reputation around the (entirely false) claim that he “invented” email. His bio, his Twitter feed and his website all position himself as having invented email. He didn’t. It looks like he wrote an implementation of an email system in 1978, long after others were working on similar things. He may have added some nice features … appears to have potentially been ahead of others in making a full address book be a part of the email system. He may, in fact, be the first person who shortened “electronic mail” to “email” which is cool enough, and he’d have an interesting claim if that’s all he claimed. Unfortunately, he’s claiming much, much more than that. He’s set up an entire website in which he accuses lots of folks, including Techdirt, of unfairly “attacking” him. He apparently believes that some of the attacks on him are because he spoke out against corruption in India. Or because people think only rich white people can invent stuff. None of that is accurate. There’s a simple fact, and it’s that Ayyadurai did not invent email.

TechDirt deserves a vigorous defense. If it doesn’t get that defense, it may go out of business. That is not just bad for the company, it is bad for anyone that believes in free expression.

An important note: Ayyadurai’s counsel is Charles Harder, of California. He’s the one, with bankrolling by Peter Thiel, that brought down Gawker regarding the publication of the Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) sex tape. Before the First Amendment issues could be challenged in an appellate court, the $140M verdict sent the company spiraling into bankruptcy.

But don’t think for a second that Harder is infallible. Because he’s also behind the Melania Trump lawsuit where she sued because she was called an escort. And, as I posted recently, I think he screwed the pooch by revealing that Melania wanted to use her new-found high profile to make millions. The negative press was devastating. And I blame the lawyers for that.

The suit is important, very important. Because, while it was easy to laugh at Gawker going down the tubes due to its reprehensible conduct, there were significant First Amendment issues regarding the publication of something that was true, and that Bollea had also made his sex life fodder for discussion.

As Scott Greenfield notes:

There’s no sex tape of Ayyadurai. There’s no ickiness pigeonhole to shove this into. It’s clearly a matter of public interest and concern. And Techdirt isn’t Gawker. At the time, the constitutional “scholars” argued that none of this would happen, there would be no chilling effect. It was just about Gawker, because Gawker, and sex videos because privacy. Nothing to see here, move along.

But Harder figured something out that you didn’t. Or you didn’t want to. He figured out that if you bring a suit, bring it in the right jurisdiction, try to get some home field advantage, a defendant might get Gawkered into submission. In this case, suit was brought in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. That’s where Ayyadurai happens to be. Mike? He’s in California, far, far away.

Thus far, TechDirt has imposed the defense of “In pilleum caca.”(Go shit in a hat.) But it costs money to do that against the very well-funded Harder.

You can donate to the Techdirt Survival Fund here. Please give a few dollars if you appreciate the right to speak freely.

As I know all too well from personal experience, free speech isn’t free. It needs to be defended.

Elsewhere:

What a strange allegation, in alleged-inventor-of-e-mail vs. Techdirt lawsuit (Volokh at Washington Post):

No — a copyright registration for a program named “email” is not the U.S. government recognizing Ayyadurai “as the inventor of email.” No-one at the Copyright Office determines whether a program (or any other work) is a new invention. (Patent examiners may do that, but the Copyright Office doesn’t.) Indeed, no-one at the Copyright Office runs the program, reads the source code, or tries to compare the program’s description to those of other programs.

We Stand With TechDirt and So Should You (Carr at Pando):

Certainly the philosophical connection between Thiel’s attempt to kill Gawker and Ayyadurai’s attempt to silence TechDirt couldn’t be clearer: Both involve wealthy tech moguls using their cash (and Charles Harder) to shut down critical reporting, with the handy side effect that other media outlets are frightened into silence. At the very least, Thiel’s crusade against Gawker has emboldened plaintiffs like Ayyadurai to try to outspend the First Amendment.

…

But, of course, it barely matters whether TechDirt would win or lose in court — the cost of defending a $15m suit could easily be enough to bankrupt the site before a judge gets a chance to rule.

EFF is Proud to Stand Beside Techdirt in its “First Amendment Fight for its Life.” (Greene @ Electronic Frontier Foundation):

Techdirt is a vital resource – it provides a wide audience with independent journalism addressing some of the biggest technology issues of our time. The Internet community wouldn’t be the same without it. But of course this case is not just about Techdirt. It’s about freedom of the press generally.

Man who claims to have invented email has filed a lawsuit that could put one news website out of business (Hiltzik @ LA Times)

Ayyadurai has pursued his claim to be “the man who invented email” energetically in the news media. Lately he’s taken a new tack: filing lawsuits against news organizations that challenge his claim. His most recent target is a small technology news site called Techdirtand its parent company, the Redwood City research firm Floor64.

…

The website and its founder Mike Masnick — the author of most of the posts at issue in the case — have moved to have the lawsuit thrown out, partially on the grounds that Ayyadurai is a public figure and his activities are legitimate topics of public interest.

Techdirt says that because of its legal costs, the lawsuit has put it in a 1st Amendment “fight for its life.” In a Jan. 11 blog post aimed at drumming up public and financial support, Masnick wrote, “This fight could very well be the end of Techdirt, even if we are completely on the right side of the law.”

…

The history of email is capacious enough to accommodate hundreds of inspired engineers and scientists. Ayyadurai merits acknowledgment as a contributor to this rich pageant, especially given the talent he showed at 14. But no one should claim to be the inventor of such a multifaceted, evolutionary system, and Ayyadurai should stop trying.

February 8th, 2017

Melania Trump’s Lawyers Screw The Pooch

Before getting into the latest Trump lawsuit — this one by Melania Trump for defamation, filed in my local courthouse — I want to get one thing out of the way. I think that the families of politicians are off–limits for commentary and ridicule except in limited circumstances.

One of those circumstances is an active engagement in politics. Thus, Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton were both fair game, but First Ladies Barbara and Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama were not.

Children are likewise off-limits, unless engaged in politics. Thus, Eric Trump, Donald, Jr., and Ivanka are all fair game, while Tiffany and Baron are not.

This is the reason that Rush Limbaugh and John McCain were both mercilessly skewered for picking on the child of a president. It is vulgar and completely beyond all sense of decency. While they had the constitutional right to conduct themselves that way, others had the right to flay them for having done it.

But yesterday Melania lost that protection with her claims in a defamation case. The nuts and bolts of the claim is that some blogger claimed she was an escort while also being a model, and she says that was false and defamatory. She sued the blogger and a website, Mail Online.

So far, no problem from me. If the claims are utterly false, have at it.

But her lawyers threw her under the bus with claims that she lost “multimillion dollar business relationships” during the years in which she would be “one of the most photographed women in the world.” This would be a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person.”

What the hell? She’s complaining about not being able to use the White House for profit?

She, and the family, were ripped by the New York Times (and many others) yesterday in an editorial:

But any veneer of plausible deniability about the Trump family’s greed and their transactional view of the most powerful job in the world was shattered this week by a defamation lawsuit the first lady, Melania Trump, filed….

There is no benign way to look at that claim. Mrs. Trump evidently believes her new title affords her a chance to rake in millions of dollars.

Here’s the kicker: It is wholly unnecessary to make such comments when filing a complaint in New York. A general claim of losses will suffice. The details will come later in a document called a bill of particulars, and even there, such hyperbolic language is not needed.

If the objective was to garner press with the suit, well they succeeded. Beyond, perhaps, their wildest nightmares. They have placed their client’s name on an exceptionally damaging document describing her desire for White House profiteering.

The lawyers also did something else very Trumpian: They made outrageous demands for damages, of $300,000,000. Yup, you read that right.

And, as regular readers of this blog know, you aren’t even allowed to make monetary demands in a complaint in personal injury suits in New York. It is specifically outlawed, and is sanctionable. (And yes, defamation is a type of personal injury suit.)

The geniuses who did this to Melania?

The one pulling the strings is Charles Harder from Beverly Hills, who has experience in high-profile defamation cases. And he should have known better than to impugn his own client.

On the New York side as local counsel is Mark Rosenberg of Tarter Krinsky & Drogin. According to his bio, these are his practice areas:

China Desk
Hospitality and Restaurant Services
Intellectual Property
Retail

Seriously? They couldn’t find local counsel who knew how to craft a simple defamation complaint in state court (which does not require the level of detail that federal court does), without negligently killing their own client in the process?

The job of local counsel is to make sure that the out-of-state-guy doesn’t screw the pooch on rules of procedure. And here, the rules of procedure were clear: It was unnecessary (and damaging) to have Melania confess her true motives of using the White House for profit, and unnecessary to potentially subject her to sanctions for an impermissible ad damnum clause.

The Trump v. Mail Media filing is here.

P.S. Making a claim for legal fees at the end was also dumb, as they are not permitted. It shows one of two things: The lawyer is ignorant or the lawyer is copying from a form without actually reading and comprehending it.

January 18th, 2017

Zervos v. Trump (An Apprentice Sues Trump for Defamation — A Look at the Issues)

Summer Zervos

Donald Trump, who’s becoming a regular on these pages, was sued yesterday for defamation by a former Apprentice contestant, and it is clear he will have his hands full with this one. This post will look at a dozen issues in the Complaint, both as to how plaintiff’s counsel screwed some things up with lousy lawyering, and what may give Trump trouble.

First: Suit was brought by Summer Zervos. She claimed (along with many other women) during the election campaign that Trump sexually assaulted her back in 2007, and he called her a liar for having said so. So, the statute of limitations having expired for assault, she sued for defamation on his recent denials.

The same tactic was used against Bill Cosby, using the denial of old assault claims as a means to bring a defamation action. Cosby’s claim of “self-defense” in denying the accusations failed (in federal court in Massachusetts).

Second: She is represented by “celebrity attorney” Gloria Allred, who last appeared on my blog in 2009, and not in a good way. Calling her a publicity hound would be an insult to hounds everywhere. When publicity drives a suit, instead of good lawyering, opportunities are lost (for the client).

Third: Today’s Exhibit A is the complaint Allred apparently drafted with her local counsel, Mariann Meier Wang, and I say apparently because if you read the first few pages, it doesn’t look anything like a legal pleading and I can’t imagine any competent lawyer drafting anything like this. (Zervos v. Trump)

It is a scream for publicity. A howl for attention. Perhaps, in some bizarre way, she is perfect for Trump — two people who will stop at nothing until they get the cameras turned on them. It has been used for an improper purpose, to deliberately put inflammatory material before the court for the purposes of garnering press.

For the non-lawyers checking in, a complaint is supposed to have “plain and concise statements” in consecutive paragraphs. They are supposed to have, as much as practicable, a single allegation in each paragraph.

Lawyers are kinda orderly like that. Because it makes it easy to admit or deny allegations and the court can then figure out what actual facts or issues are in dispute. And that can be really, really important because…

Fourth: The complaint, as it exists now, is a lost opportunity. A smart lawyer would put in those simple statements, then see if Trump denies them, and then cross-examine him on those denials. If done right, this can be very effective. Because if a defendant denies something he should admit, he has now done it with his counsel by his side. Not only is the defendant tarnished, but so is the lawyer. Both the witness and his lawyer would look like a fool in front of a jury if Trump denies a fact that is easily provable.

But as written now, it is impossible for Trump to admit or deny almost every single paragraph due to the drafting. And that is a big bonus for Trump.

Fifth: The plaintiff failed to verify the complaint. Oops. This is real basic lawyering, and it’s a simple couple paragraphs at the end of the complaint where the signer states that the above is true. It is not required for the complaint, but if the complaint is verified by either the plaintiff or the lawyer, then the answer must be verified too. And since Trump lives in Manhattan, where the suit was brought, he could be forced to personally sign that answer, with its admissions and denials.

An interesting side note on this is that the lawyer can verify the answer if lawyer and client are in different counties. But it seems doubtful that Trump will change his residency (based on current comments) and odds are his lawyer will be in Manhattan. So if the plaintiff had been smart enough to verify, and had used simple statements, Trump could have been forced to sign on the dotted line. Now he doesn’t.

This was a blown opportunity.

Sixth: While those golden opportunities are lost, there is other material in there that will be fought over tooth and nail in the early going that will give Trump a headache. Such as proving the falsity of comments related to other women. Like this Trump tweet:

“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign, total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

This can be a real problem for Trump, as he potentially brought other women into the suit as witnesses with his over-the-top tweets. This is not a place he wants to be, for while he may be able to attack this particular plaintiff as a fabricator (‘Look, she kept coming back to me, over and over again!’) that is more difficult with more witnesses.

Seventh: In New York, parts of pleadings can be struck for unnecessarily putting “scandalous or prejudicial matter” in them (CPLR 3024). While it is highly unlikely that a court would kill the whole suit, of course, given that we have liberal pleading requirements that focuses on putting the defendant on notice of the facts, this could be an early issue. It wouldn’t be a winning argument, but would be one used to stall and delay the suit with motion practice.

Eighth: Another early defense argument may be that the conduct of putting immaterial comments and opinions in the complaint was done for an inherently improper reason, and that could theoretically be sanctionable under our court rules. (While it would be a rare court that grants sanctions in New York, I expect a Trump lawyer to go on the offense. More motion practice, more delays.)

The response would no doubt be that it is impossible to harm Trump with the allegations, even if some of the material is irrelevant or that the complaint suffers from prolixity. In other words, no harm, no foul. While it’s a crappy complaint from a lawyer’s perspective, this would be the better of the two arguments.

Ninth: But the reason to go after the manner of filing the complaint is that this doesn’t appear to be a case likely to be dismissed outright by the court, but rather, one that will go through discovery. There appear to be sufficient allegations in there that x happened and then Trump lied about it, thereby defaming the plaintiff. And that means, ultimately, the deposition of Donald Trump on his conduct and comments. And because the complaint references other women as well, the discovery would be quite wide-ranging.

If Trump can somehow force the complaint to be modified, he could conceivably try to limit discovery when it comes to his conduct toward women other than the plaintiff.

Tenth: The plaintiff lives in California and the defendant in New York. Federal court was, therefore, an option. In favor of bringing the action in federal court, instead of state court which counsel chose, is that federal court is far less likely to put up with nonsense and you are far more likely to get far-reaching discovery. While it depends on the particular judge you draw, state judges tend to be more restrictive here.

In addition, federal actions tend to move much faster. So if the plaintiff actually had a political motive — such as getting a deposition of Trump done before the 2018 mid-term elections — federal court would have been the way to go.

Eleventh: On the other hand, federal court has a one-day limit on depositions. New York state court does not. That means Trump can’t filibuster his way through the day with word salad answers and hope that it’s done.

Twelfth: I said months ago that Donald Trump was a one-man-bar-exam. Everything he does ends litigiously. It doesn’t appear that this will stop anytime soon.

November 1st, 2016

Trump and the Threat of Legal Sanctions

An old graphic, because Trump is a repeat offender.

Today we once again turn to Donald Trump, the One Man Bar Exam. Specifically, as to how he might be sanctioned in New York should he bring a frivolous defamation suit here.

Quick background: To absolutely no one’s surprise, Trump threatened to sue the New York Times two weeks ago for defamation because it reported the news. Specifically, it reported that women had stepped forward to assert that he’d sexually assaulted them.

He then went on to assert that he would likewise sue the bevy of women who have stepped forward to talk about the assaults they claimed.

Now comes Ted Boutrous of Gibson Dunn and Crutcher to say that he will defend anyone Trump sues. For free. And he likely has 100 lawyers around the country willing to pitch in their services. There is no shortage of lawyers who would gladly take Trump’s testimony and delight in obtaining liberal discovery about him and his manner with women.

In a discussion on how Trump would get destroyed if he were dumb enough to bring such a suit, Boutrous writes at Politico regarding sanctions:

If Trump does end up pursuing these cases, he could do worse than lose. He could get hit with monetary sanctions for bringing frivolous claims and be subjected to countersuits by these women, who can argue that he has defamed them by calling them “liars” and who are private figures and thus not governed by the Sullivan “actual malice” standard that restricts Trump’s claims against them. All they would have to prove would be that Trump negligently made a false statement that injured their reputations.

Now I don’t actually think Trump will sue. I think he did this solely to intimidate others from coming forward, so that they would think, “I don’t need this shit.” It’s a classic case of intimidation.

But if he is irrational enough to ignore the advice not to sue, and he brings the action in state court in New York where he lives, I’m here to tell you the legal mechanics of how such a sanction could come to be.

Since I’ve been sued twice for defamation over blog posts here, in addition to being a personal injury attorney who routinely brings lawsuits, I have a pretty good prospective from both sides of the -v-.

Since I think the case is an absolute slam dunk against Trump if he sues a media outlet I’m going to leap ahead and go straight to the issue of sanctions.

I’ve written about this stuff before. After Trump brought a dumb defamation claim against Univision, and sought $500M in damages, I laid out the case against him. Then I wrote an April Fool’s gag, complete with fake judicial opinion, laying out the case for sanctions.

In supporting the motion for sanctions, the court might consider Trump’s prior acknowledgment that he brings frivolous suits, as he stated to the Washington Post:

Trump said in an interview that he knew he couldn’t win the suit but brought it anyway to make a point. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

While New York doesn’t have an anti-SLAPP statute, much to my dismay (my NYLJ op-ed is here), and has a judicial culture against sanctions, any lawyer dumb enough into letting his arm be twisted into bringing suit may well look to New York’s state court as the place to sue.

So these are the four places to look for sanctions in a New York action that I can conceive — two of which I have never seen happen — assuming the judge bucks the judicial culture against awarding them:

First: CPLR 8303-a: This provides for an award of mandatory costs and fees up to $10,000 for making a “frivolous” claim. In order to meet this definition of frivolousness under this statute, a court must find either that

(1) the “claim … was commenced, used or continued in bad faith, solely to delay or prolong, the resolution of the litigation or to harass or maliciously injure another”; or

(2) “the claim … was commenced or continued in bad faith without any reasonable basis in law or fact and could not be supported by a good faith argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law.”

Note that this is per claim, so that if Trump brings suit with multiple claims, it is 10K per claim, not per lawsuit. It’s a nice multiplication factor to use against the vexatious litigant.

Second: Then there are the court rules, specifically, 22 NYCRR § 130.1–1, wherein a court, in its discretion, may also impose financial sanctions upon any party who engages in frivolous conduct. Conduct is frivolous if:

(1) it is completely without merit in law and cannot be supported by a reasonable argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law;

(2) it is undertaken primarily to delay or prolong the resolution of the litigation, or to harass or maliciously injure another; or

(3) it asserts material factual statements that are false. (22 NYCRR § 130.1–1[c][1–3].)

So essentially we have a statute for commencing a frivolous suit and a court rule for conduct. The one for conduct has no limitation.

Third: This is for an angry judge, who wants to buck the judicial culture against sanctions, and try to use the logic used by the federal courts, wherein courts retain an inherent power to sanction, “to manage their own proceedings and to control the conduct of those who appear before them.” Chambers v. Nasco.

New York judges already have the power to dismiss cases and award attorneys fees, but how far beyond that is an open question. (See, New York’s Court of Appeals in 2014 in CDR Creances SAS v. Cohen, in the context of fraud on the court, with discussion of federal court decisions.)

A judge angry with an abuse of the courts with such a frivolous suit by a wealthy individual might easily expand the Chambers v. Nasco rationale to New York, and it could easily be upheld in such a circumstance.

And I would argue that a sanction should be commensurate with Trump’s wealth, to insure that it has the necessary impact. Let’s fact it, a $10,000 sanction for someone that claims to be worth “in excess of $10 billion” is not even a rounding error for the accountants.

Fourth: If Trump brings suit, there is a 110% chance of him placing a ginormous, stupid number claim for damages in the complaint (even though he may well be libel-proof). You are, quite simply, not permitted to do that, as it would explicitly violate CPLR § 3017(c), which prohibits ad damnum clauses (the monetary damage clause) in personal injury cases. It reads, quite simply:

In an action to recover damages for personal injuries or wrongful death, the complaint, … shall contain a prayer for general relief but shall not state the amount of damages to which the pleader deems himself entitled.

Now there are only two possible reasons for a plaintiff to put such a thing in a pleading, given that this law was passed in 2003. First, that the party deliberately violated the law in the quest for press, in the hopes of embarrassing someone with headlines. Second, that the lawyer is ignorant.

While it has never been done before, to my knowledge, the sanction was urged by New York’s late guru of civil practice, Professor David Siegel as a way of enforcing the law against those that willfully violate it.

Finally, if I were writing the brief, I would make damn sure to point out that Trump is a vexatious litigant, and that if the court refuses to sanction then it should expect more of the same. Again. And again. And again.