The legal complaint against the newspaper was filed on Sept. 15.
A federal district judge in Florida threw out President Donald Trump’s multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against The New York Times on Sept. 19.
U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday said in a ruling that the lawsuit as it currently stands violates court rules.
The suit “stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8” of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 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.
“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 continued, referring to a famous public forum in London, England.
The lawsuit was filed Sept. 15.
That rule requires that a legal complaint must include “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”
While the complaint weighs in at 85 pages, the first count does not appear until page 80; the second appears on page 83.
“Even under the most generous and lenient application of Rule 8, the complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible,” the judge said.
Merryday ordered that the complaint be struck and gave Trump permission to amend it within 28 days.
Trump filed the lawsuit over articles and a book written by two New York Times reporters and published during the height of the 2024 election, alleging that they were crafted with “actual malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage” on him.
The Supreme Court held in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) that public figures must prove actual malice, a higher legal standard than the negligence required for private citizens.
Public figures cannot win damages for libel if they fail to establish that a statement was issued with actual malice, which has been defined as “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
“Defendants maliciously published the book and the articles knowing that these publications were filled with repugnant distortions and fabrications about President Trump,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit also named book publisher Penguin Random House as one of the defendants.
The legal complaint describes “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” a book published by Penguin Random House in September 2024, as “malicious, defamatory, and disparaging.”
The book is now the number 20 most-read book on Amazon, the complaint said.
The goal of the defendants named in the lawsuit is to “tarnish [Trump’s] legacy of achievement, destroy his reputation as a successful businessman, and subject him to humiliation and ridicule.”
