Before The New York Times even responded to President Donald Trump’s 85-page defamation lawsuit, a federal judge threw out the case.
The lawsuit was way too long, the judge said.
“As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary,” US District Judge Steven Merryday wrote in a snappy order Friday. “A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.”
Merryday, an appointee of former President George HW Bush, said Trump’s attorneys had 28 days to re-file the lawsuit, giving them a maximum page count of 40 pages for the next attempt.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said the president would press on with the lawsuit.
“President Trump will continue to hold the Fake News accountable through this powerhouse lawsuit against the New York Times, its reporters, and Penguin Random House, in accordance with the judge’s direction on logistics,” the spokesperson said.
Trump filed the lawsuit on Monday, alleging that The New York Times and several of its journalists had defamed him.
“We welcome the judge’s quick ruling, which recognized that the complaint was a political document rather than a serious legal filing,” a Times spokesperson told Business Insider.
The lawsuit, which sought $15 billion in damages, also named Penguin Random House as a defendant over a book it published by two Times journalists. Representatives for Penguin Random House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s lawsuit included a long list of grievances against the Times and a series of claims about his success in politics and business.
Merryday described the claims as “tedious and burdensome,” containing “abundant, florid, and enervating detail” that was “often repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous.”
“The reader of the complaint must labor through allegations, such as ‘a new journalistic low for the hopelessly compromised and tarnished ‘Gray Lady,'” Merryday wrote, singling out one sentence from Trump’s lawsuit.
While the lawsuit alleged only two counts of defamation, it didn’t explain the first count until page 80 of the 85-page complaint, the Florida-based judge noted.
Merryday wrote that the lawsuit was “decidedly improper and impermissible” under federal court rules.
“Although lawyers receive a modicum of expressive latitude in pleading the claim of a client, the complaint in this action extends far beyond the outer bound of that latitude,” he wrote.
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