Friday, September 09, 2022

🚨

Let's start here with the flavor of the judge's ruling, rather than the full meal:

Plaintiff initiated this lawsuit on March 24, 2022, alleging that “the Defendants, blinded by political ambition, orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton.” (DE 177, Am. Compl. ¶ 9). On this general premise, Plaintiff brings a claim for violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), predicated on the theft of trade secrets,obstruction of justice, and wire fraud (Count I). He additionally brings claims for: injurious falsehood (Count III); malicious prosecution (Count V); violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) (Count VII); theft of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (“DTSA”) (Count VIII); and violations of the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) (Count IX). The Amended Complaint also contains counts for various conspiracy charges and theories of agency and vicarious liability. (Counts II, IV, VI, and X–XVI).

I know you don't read it as I do (i.e., as a lawyer does, even a superannuated one as myself, so long out of legal practice I've almost forgotten how to draft a Defendant's Original Answer.), so let me elucidate, briefly. Because for a judge who is supposed to appear impartial and objective at all times, this opening paragraph screams the judge's intent:  get this crap outta my court! 

First, the court quotes the plaintiff's pleading, establishing immediately the premise that will be proven later: this is a stinking pile of crap.  The allegation as quoted is farcical; and the court wants to be sure its full flavor is preserved and presented as grounds for this ruling.  The long quoted harangue, so overly broad as to be nothing but a political rant, is the "general premise" upon which claims are brought for as many violations of law as one lawyer (or set of lawyers) can conjure up.  Now generally it's a good idea to throw as many grounds for recovery against the judicial wall as you can, so at least some of them stick.  But this is a mulligatawny of complaints, an alphabet soup of grievances meant to express how badly the Plaintiff has been treated, rather than state a claim cognizable by a court of law.

It's a joke, IOW.

Plaintiff’s theory of this case, set forth over 527 paragraphs in the first 118 pages of the Amended Complaint, is difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner. It was certainly not presented that way. Nevertheless, I will attempt to distill it here.

The court has to; I don't.  But 118 pages?  That's not a pleading, it's an overextended legal brief.  I've said before Trump is filing suits like he was pro se, and I stand by that.  We'll come back to that point in a minute, because it doesn't help his counsel one jot.  Hang on, let the court explain:

First, the pleading itself. A complaint filed in federal court must contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(1). Each allegation must be simple, concise, and direct. Each claim must be stated in numbered paragraphs,and each numbered paragraph limited as far as practicable to a single set of circumstances. Fed. R. Civ. P. 10.

Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is 193 pages in length, with 819 numbered paragraphs. It contains 14 counts, names 31 defendants, 10 “John Does” described as fictitious and unknown persons, and 10 “ABC Corporations” identified as fictitious and unknown entities. Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is neither short nor plain, and it certainly does not establish that Plaintiff is entitled to any relief.
You get there, in fairly plain language, what an original Complaint is supposed to do:  set forth briefly the facts and law which establish Plaintiff's injury at the hands of the Defendant, and why Plaintiff is entitled to relief.  In law school we learn this as a "cause of action," because the courts can only grant relief on a recognized "cause of action."  Otherwise the courts are just calling balls or strikes in Calvinball, and the courts are clogged with people demanding justice because...well, because.  A "cause of action" controls what the courts can do, and can't do.  The court is saying, and will explain in detail (which I'll skip) that Trump hasn't stated a cause of action, and so the court can't do anything with Trump's Complaint.

Pretty much what we lawyers call "hornbook law," meaning it's so fundamental you can't ignore it; except Trump's lawyers did.  And even if they did properly state a cause of action:

More troubling, the claims presented in the Amended Complaint are not warranted under existing law. In fact, they are foreclosed by existing precedent, including decisions of the Supreme Court. 

Yeah; this is the court's way of saying plaintiff's case is a dog's breakfast.  Again, I'll skip the details, fascinating as they are.  But the court's opinion itself is 65 pages long, addressing the claims of a Complaint that runs to 118 pages; we have to cut out a great deal of detail just to get the interesting bit.  Suffice to say the court doesn't treat the Complaint as a pro se document, but Trump's attorneys would be better off if it were.  There isn't a shred of the Complaint that survives the court's analysis, and when that analysis is point-by-point examination of how the pleading fails to state a cause of action, the fundamental purpose of a Complaint, there's going to be a lot of attorney blood on the floor.  Take my word for it, it's pretty freakin' brutal.

Now, throughout I've written of the "Complaint," but the court addresses the "Amended Complaint."  I did that just avoid typing "Amended" so many times.  Now the court can explain the difference.  First, it is noted the Amended Complaint was allowed in order to cure certain legal deficiencies noted by the Defendants.  So how'd that work out?

Instead, Plaintiff added eighty new pages of largely irrelevant allegations that did nothing to salvage the legal sufficiency of his claims. The inadequacies with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint are not “merely issues of technical pleading,” as Plaintiff contends, but fatal substantive defects that preclude Plaintiff from proceeding under any of the theories he has presented. At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.
 That pretty much sums up the preceding 63 pages of this order.  The judge then dismisses with prejudice all claims of the plaintiff against the defendants purportedly raised in the Amended Complaint, and signs off with this statement:

I reserve jurisdiction to adjudicate issues pertaining to sanctions.  

Which has the press saying this:
That's an invitation to the defendants to seek attorneys fees as sanctions.  Of course, Trump pays in horses, when he pays at all, so that might be a bootless enterprise.  Still, it couldn't hurt.

So, why is this court order important? Well, partly for this reason: Let me divert your attention for one minute, the order by Judge Middlebrooks on Trump's attempt to have this case rmoved to Judge Cannon: Forum shopping with a vengeance. And before tout le monde starts the hue and cry again about the "corruption" inherent in the system because of this one judge, I will remind le monde that Trump lost 60 cases claiming "election fraud," including at least one case that went straight to the Supreme Court, WHILE HE WAS THE SITTING POTUS. He's now an FPOTUS, and while that seemingly carries a great deal of weight in Judge Cannon's court, it really doesn't anywhere else. And given the nature of the issues (see below), I don't see this case lingering long in the 11th Cir. or on the Supreme Court docket. I would also underline the point that Trump did not have better lawyers in fhe face of the DOJ in Judge Cannon's courtroom. Had this case landed in Middlebrooks' court, it would have faced the same level of scrutiny.  Which already damns Judge Cannon simply by the inevitable comparisons.  And is underscores my assertion that Judge Cannon, despite the reputation of the 11th Cir., can't really expect to be treated any better going forward than Trump was in Judge Middllebrooks' court. Let's start with the appeal process. I'm no expert on federal appeals, and especially interlocutory appeals (appealing the effect of an order that is not a final order in a case.) But the general rule for appeals is that you must first give the lower court a chance to cure its error before appealing that error to the higher court. Every appeal is based on error which much be corrected for the law to be followed and justice to be done.  As I mentioned with Bannon's appeal of his contempt charge; the first step in that appeal is a motion for new trial, giving the trial court an opportunity to correct the claimed error(s).  I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that such an action is necessary (or at least wise?) in an interlocutory appeal like the search warrant case presents.  That may be why the DOJ is asking the judge for small corrections in her order: That's one point. The issue of national security and the government's ability to conduct criminal investigations, is another: The DOJ wants to make it clear to the judge that she is meddling with primal forces: I assume this would also get these documents into the record in time for a review by the appellate court (which won't have a full record, because there isn't one yet. It behooves the DOJ to make that record as full as possible; which explains Trump's objections. They aren't quite that stupid.) The DOJ also has its eye on the 11th Circuit:
Will Judge Cannon "back down"? I kinda doubt. She's proven she is in so far over her head she has to look up to see bottom. That's not a condition easily cured by a quick reversal of opinion. I expect her to dig in her heels, and the DOJ to appeal instanter, urging haste on the grounds this order interferes with a criminal investigation (something the Supremes have said civil courts cannot do), interferes with national security concerns (🚨), and even interferes with the operations of Congress. Yeah, she hit the trifecta. I don't see anything going her way on appeal.

But I definitely think that's where this goes next.
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