Posted on 12/19/2024 8:33:41 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Donald Trump’s total humiliation of ABC News over its most recent slander, delivered through the flapping gums of malignant dwarf George Stephanopoulos, was one of those delicious examples of how the New Rules keep coming around to bite the left on its collective fourth point of contact. Even a decade ago, this would not have happened. Defamation cases, particularly against public figures, were almost impossible to win and were less about money than about enraged plaintiffs tormenting those who talked bad about them. But that’s all changed. There’s big money at stake now.
The left decided it was going to use legal civil lawfare, as well as criminal lawfare, to take out in court the opponents it couldn’t take out in the public square. This initiative worked for a little while. Now, they’ve got a problem. We’re doing it to them. And it’s only going to get worse for them.
Let’s talk about defamation. Without getting too far into the weeds, the elements of a defamation claim are generally that a person makes a false and derogatory statement that causes the victim damage. I do have one pet peeve, which is kind of fussy and lawyerly. People often say that truth is a defense to a defamation claim. That’s not always true.
At least in California, falsity is an element of the claim. If falsity is an element, the plaintiff must prove it. A defense is something a defendant must prove. If it’s a defense, the defendant must prove the statement is false. Whether it’s an element or an affirmative defense varies between jurisdictions, and it’s probably not important to this column, but it’s important to me as a lawyer.
What happened in this case was that Stephanopoulos decided to insist, on his largely unwatched Sunday morning show, that Donald Trump had been found liable for rape. Obviously, being called a rapist is derogatory, unless you’re a prominent Democrat donor. What Clinton’s brunette Oompa-Loompa was referring to was that weird woman in New York who accused Trump of molesting her in a department store dressing room 30 years ago. This ridiculous case, made possible by a bunch of obnoxious legal maneuvers, was cooked up largely by the left as a way to trash Trump.
In any sane society, a three-decade-old she-said allegation without a single shred of any kind of supporting physical or other evidence would’ve been laughed out of court. But things don’t get laughed out of court anymore in a venue where 90% of the jurors are your political opponents and where the judge not only drops the ball but fires it into the center of the Earth with a cannon.
The myriad details of why and how this ridiculous lawsuit got to the point of a verdict against Trump are beyond the scope of this column – I’d put money down that it’s not going to survive the appellate process, at least in anything remotely like its present form of an $83 million judgment. What does matter here is what the jury found. The jury had a written verdict form where it was specifically asked if Trump was liable for rape. The jury found he was not. It did find he was liable for sexual assault. So, a key legal question is falsity – did George Stephanopoulos make a false statement about Trump when he said Trump was found liable for rape when Trump was only found liable for sexual assault? Rape and sexual assault are different things. If they weren’t different things, there wouldn’t have been different questions regarding those findings on the verdict form. They also would not have had different instructions as to how the jury was to rule on them. But the judge came along later and, for no good reason, opined that sexual assault was actually rape. That was ridiculous, and dumb people have been claiming that this gratuitous dicta is somehow an actual determination. It isn’t.
So, Little George runs his mouth and Trump sues him and ABC as well. And this is an important part – he sues them in Florida. Florida, for those of you who are not paying attention, is definitely not blue New York.
The question is why, and this is where the New Rules come into play, in my humble opinion. And why do I have a humble opinion? Before winding down my full-time work as a trial lawyer this year, I spent 30 years as a civil litigator. I won money millions for defamation plaintiffs and beat big cases against defamation defendants – including one you know.
So, here’s what I think, though I had nothing to do with this case, and I don’t have any inside information. First, you need to understand that this case was never a slam dunk for Donald Trump. It wasn’t a slam dunk for ABC, either. Putting on my defense attorney hat, there are lots of ways I could’ve fought this case. Yes, it was false that Trump was held liable for rape. There is some squishiness about how the sexual assault finding would relate to that. There are also some actual malice arguments they could make. “Actual malice” is a term of art in defamation cases involving public figures which requires either knowledge of the falsity of the statement or a reckless disregard for the truth. It comes from the case of New York Times vs. Sullivan, and the rule means that most defamation cases brought by famous people fail, floundering on the rocks of actual malice, and no one’s more famous than Donald Trump.
Money.
The left has run up the value of civil lawsuits against their enemies. Though it wasn’t a defamation case, the State of New York got a judgment for hundreds of millions of dollars in a legally frivolous civil lawsuit against Donald Trump‘s company. There was also the Carroll verdict referred to above against Trump himself. Rudy Giuliani was hit with a huge multimillion-dollar award in a defamation case involving some Georgia election workers. Alex Jones got crushed by the multimillion-dollar judgment in his case. And Fox News famously settled, for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, a civil lawsuit by Dominion that the left had hoped with bankrupt the company.
So, what was ABC looking at? ABC was looking at a case it could lose in a venue favorable to Donald Trump. And if I was Donald Trump‘s lawyer – and I am not Donald Trump‘s lawyer – I would’ve looked at the jurors and told them that the only way they could correct the horrible wrong that George Stephanopoulos had inflicted upon Donald Trump by falsely stating that he was an adjudicated rapist is to give him $1 billion. And you know what? I might’ve got $1 billion. I bet you that I’d have got at least $100 million. Is that because I am the greatest lawyer who ever walked the Earth? No. It’s because that’s what we do now. That’s the New Rule. Civil lawsuits are not about fairly and reasonably compensating the wronged individuals for the real damages they suffered. That was the Old Rules, when lawsuits were about justice. Now, they are about nuking your political enemies from orbit.
ABC, in conjunction with its insurers, understood not just that it was going to be embarrassed by what came out in discovery but that it was faced with a Mount Everest-sized potential jury award from those Florida knuckle-draggers who couldn’t figure out how to get off of jury duty. And they also had to understand that the appellate process might not save them – several conservative members of our current Supreme Court are just looking for an excuse to get rid of Sullivan.
Oh, well. I guess the New Rules aren’t working out quite the way the left had hoped. A lot of people have told the same lie as George Stephanopoulos and a whole bunch of other lies as well, and I look forward to many, many more lawsuits in courthouses out in red America.
“the flapping gums of malignant dwarf George Stephanopoulos”
I hope that little weasel reads this
I believe this. There is so much that should be known.
Georgie porgie full of lies,
Shamed the girls and made them cry,
When the men came out to play,
Georgie porgie ran away....
and paid a heavy price, but not enough of one. Yet.
End of rhyme.
Discovery would have revealed that ABC’s producer told him not to use the word. Which means they(and he) knew they shouldn’t be using that word and did it anyway, that would be hard to argue that him using it isn’t reckless disregard.
$15 million was nowhere near enough given Trump’s stature and reputation. He got the apology he wanted but nonetheless let them off easily.
excellent article explaining the reality of this case.
Discovery is the knife that can be sharp on both edges.
Stephanopoulos is a disgrace. He should immediately be drummed out of the Lollipop Guild.
“”Rape and sexual assault are different things.””
Nealy 100% of news reports speak of “sexual assault” when it’s clear it’s rape and a subject has been arrested, tried and convicted of rape. This writer seems to think there’s a difference. He may have meant it applied to just this one squirrelly case but he didn’t make that clear...
I know whereof I speak as I don’t miss a Dateline segment or any other true crime story!!
NYT v sullivan was another case of judges writing laws. The constitution says only congress can write laws
I personally think libel laws should be weakened or maybe abandoned entirely. But it has to be done by state legislators, not federal judges or even federal congress.
Thanks. I had heard that Steffie had been warned, but not who warned him. I figured it must have been one of President Trump's attorneys. Now I see that there could be even more "stuff" revealed if the producer's and Steffie's correspondence was revealed... I suspect they both shared a common opinion of the subject ...
It’s worse than you think - it’s not just embarrassing, it’s actually company-ending, and it doesn’t just stop at ABC or Georgie.
Known provable facts:
1. ABC is wholly owned by Disney.
2. Disney is headquartered in California.
3. California has a law that makes it illegal to fire someone for political beliefs. This can result in enormous statutory fines and damage awards.
4. The actress Gina Carano is currently suing Disney in California for such wrongful termination; she is being financially backed by Elon Musk.
5. As stated by many, Carano is being backed by Musk under the condition that she *doesn’t* take any settlement offers.
6. The Carano case has passed all initial hurdles and is now going into discovery.
Discussion/Speculation:
Carano’s case is Disney’s worst nightmare. She’s financially and legally backed by the richest man on the planet, so Disney Legal can’t just outspend her and make her go away. They can’t out-lawyer her because Musk has provided the best available law firm (where Disney Legal’s apparent competence has significantly declined in recent years). Her case is not going away - and it’s not actually having to pay out her specific case if they lose that’s the problem.
Carano was apparently terminated for having different political beliefs than her Disney/Lucasfilm bosses. This has been confirmed by leakers, leaked emails and more - but of course this can only be *legally* confirmed through discovery. This was also just another incident in Disney’s history under Bob Iger. They tended to fire anyone conservative or white (there’s a famous “Too Pale, Stale and Male” quote”) who wasn’t a high exec for any reason they could fabricate just to replace them with DEI appointees. Again, leaked emails as well as off the cuff comments from Disney execs showed this was what was really happening. Disney fired tens of thousands of people, many high earning such as producers, directors, etc.,
One of the contentions of Carano’s case is that this was actually the case, and the goal of discovery there is to find the legally admissible evidence of same (which, according to reports, they *will* find unless Disney is doing some serious shredding). Thing is, Disney has a chance to claim that this was not across the entire company, just the division that Carano worked for. Which would be bad enough - the thousands of people that Disney/Lucasfilm fired in favor of largely incompetent DEI appointees could still sue and literally bankrupt Lucasfilm or even Disney. One major reason those people haven’t sued is because they don’t have the funds to successfully conduct a suit; if Carano is successful, entire armies of lawyers will cheerfully take on these cases on contingency, especially as discovery has already been done and proven a pattern of behavior. Anyone who ever got fired by Disney who wasn’t the most leftarded person ever would legitimately have grounds and the ability to sue. The tsunami of lawsuits will be unlike anything ever seen in that case, which is why Disney is running scared of that suit... but they still have a slim chance of it being survivable by claiming it was just that one division plus maybe a couple people outside of it, not the whole company.
However, if the Trump/ABC case had gone to discovery and they found the same sorts of things while looking for other evidence... well, then it looks like Disney is doing that in *all* their divisions and subsidiaries as a standard operating procedure. And then the company is literally doomed because it opens them up to millions of lawsuits - anyone who ever got fired from a Disney owned operation, anyone who ever thought they didn’t get a raise or were denied a promotion? Yeah, they’ll have no trouble finding a lawyer on contingency after that.
The Carano case is not going Disney’s way.
Look for any other cases like the Trump-ABC case to be quickly settled to make them go away before discovery can take place. This is literal company-ending and legacy-destroying stuff.
See my post 13 above. It wasn’t just about what they would find in this case, but what would also likely be coincidentally discovered about their overall hiring/firing practices at ABC and Disney.
If it was only about being embarrassed, they would not have cared so much. It still would have hurt and they still would have had to pay out, but the liberals at ABC don’t really care much about that - they got to ‘own the CHUD’, so they’re good. They could even downplay the coverage on their own network and get their buddies at other networks to bury the story too.
But this goes far beyond Trump and ABC/Georgie Porgie.
Thanks. I think I’ll make me some time to learn up on that there Carano case ...
What they did to Carano is utterly disgusting. Up to and including re-education workshops.
They would have gotten away with it too, except for Elon Musk buying Twitter, then backing her lawsuit.
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