OA666: This Week on Liz's LOLsuits

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments, this is episode 666, oh man, we should have had a satanic deep dive scheduled, darn, well, wow,

0:01:26 Andrew: Well, we do have Liz Dye, so that's got to count for something, right?

0:01:30 Liz: Harsh. Harsh, fellas.

0:01:30 Thomas: I'm Thomas, hopefully not yet unfriended by Liz, that's Andrew, definitely unfrienden by Liz. Liz. How's it going, Andrew?

0:01:41 Andrew: It was great up until I decided to be an idiot eight seconds ago.

0:01:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:01:41 Liz: It's fine. We're all unfriending everybody on Twitter. It's cool. Nobody has any friends anymore.

0:01:49 Thomas: And spoiler alert, Liz is here. There's no hiding it any longer. How are you doing, Liz?

0:01:56 Liz: Hey, good. How are you?

0:01:58 Thomas: Good. A little bit of news today. You know,

0:02:00 Liz: I hear Trump's going to jail.

0:02:02 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:02 Andrew: Is a monumentous day, right, like I mean this is—is that if history classes still taught kids to memorize dates, which they don't, then, you our future grandkids would remember these dates. Right. The select committee of the House of Representatives referred out the former president of the United States and his buddy, John Eastman, for criminal charges on four separate criminal counts. There's more, right, when you read their report. So everybody is talking about how the referrals are out for conspiracy to defraud the United States, 18 U.S.C. 371, for making a conspiracy to make a false statement. And that is 18 the USC 1001. For what is a slam dunk case, 18 USC 1512C, that is obstruction of an official proceeding. And then the sort of the surprise 18 USC 2383, which is a ban on rebellion or insurrection. And I think those who listen to the next opening arguments episode will get a little bit of a deep dive on 18 USC 2383 as I try and figure that out.

0:03:16 Thomas: Ah, we're teasing. Me and the listeners will have to wait until next episode to get that deep dive. I'm excited. I think it's historic until, you know, in this next house session, they do this every other week with Joe Biden.

0:03:30 Liz: Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're Hunter Biden's penis for prosecution every single week.

0:03:38 Thomas: It will be interesting to see what they try to charge or refer Joe Biden for, but re-Hunter Biden's penis, is like what will, how they, how do they tie that in, I don't actually know what crime it is to have a son whose penis is on the internet, but they'll figure it out. Wow.

0:03:53 Liz: Whose kid's penis isn't on the internet these days? I'm just saying.

0:03:56 Thomas: We're learning more and more about Liz each and every, uh, each and everything. But

0:04:00 Andrew: Well, I was going to say, I hope Thomas.

0:04:01 Liz: I mean, you know.

0:04:03 Thomas: Yeah. Well. We'll have to leave that teaser there. I'm excited for that, can't wait for that episode, but we have something equally delightful planned, uh, Liz. Um, I hear Trump is at it again with another amazing lull suit, as, uh, as you call Them. What's this one?

0:04:07 Liz: Okay. Yeah. All right. So not to steal your thunder, Andrew, but it's time for a little Liz Was Wrong segment, because I have written at least 10 times that Donald Trump would never in a million years sue the Pulitzer board. I wrote about it in November 2021, when his dingbat attorney, Alina Haba, sent the board a demand letter threatening legal action if it didn't revoke the 2018 awards to the Post and the New York Times for their coverage of the Mueller investigation and his campaign's ties to Russia.

I wrote about it in June of 2022 when he sent his own letter screeching that "the continuing publication and recognition of the prizes on the board's website is a distortion of fact and a personal defamation that will result in the filing of litigation if the board cannot be persuaded to do the right thing" on his own. And every time Alina Haba did something dumb, and she did a lot of dumb things, I reminded people of that Pulitzer letter on the theory that it was so stupid that it illustrated Habba's function in Trump land, not as a real lawyer, but as a megaphone for bullshit. And even when his new team of Florida lawyers at Weber Crabbe Wine, this little firm in St. Petersburg, sent another threat letter in October howling that litigation was imminent if the board didn't revoke those prizes, tout suite, I still thought he was bullshitting, particularly because the letter was accompanied by a post on Trump's MySpace Griff Bucks blog demanding that the prizes be reallocated to, quote, outlets which got it right, by which he meant like Breitbart and John Solomon,

0:05:06 Andrew: I.

0:05:44 Andrew: So just to be clear, the right, predicate action here is a threatened defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize board for giving the Pulitzer Prize to accurate reporting regarding the Mueller report on the theory that it makes people who disagree with that look dumb.

0:06:04 Liz: I'm not sure that I would put it like that. I mean, sure, you could put like, what damn difference does it make? It's no crazier than his theory of the case, right? Sure, that's it. I think that the theory is that really that's kind of a fool's errand, but okay, that is our job. His theory of the case is that by refusing to revoke the prize, the Pulitzer people are blessing these defamatory statements, which were published by the Post and the Times back in 2017. And those statements, which everybody accepts are true, he does not accept they are true, and thus it is different. Look, let's not get crazy, okay? At no point did I believe he'd be dumb enough to actually file this lawsuit.

And I was wrong because those web-toed crab dinguses in St. Petersburg actually filed this ridiculous piece of dreck last week in Florida state court, no less. Now, in my defense, this lawsuit is so batshit that no rational lawyer would have filed it. I mean, it's like not as quite as batshit as the one he filed in Florida State Court against New York Attorney General Letitia James, but it's close because Florida has a two-year statute of limitations on defamation.

0:06:06 Andrew: No. I'm trying to understand it, like literally.

0:07:14 Liz: So even if the reporting had later, right, right. So like you're so, you're so out of time on here. Even if the reporting had later been proven to be false, and even if Trump could claim defamation for prizes awarded four years ago, which it was not, and which you cannot, he would still be time barred. Okay. So, but luckily his Charlotte's Web lawyers have spun a new theory of this case. Because in July of this year, after Trump had been carping at them for like a year, the board put out a statement referring to Trump's constant whining and affirming that it did not intend to revoke the prizes. They said they'd commissioned two independent reviews, both of which found that no passages or headlines, contentions, or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes, so the Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 were going to stand, they weren't going to revoke the prizes.

0:08:03 Andrew: So I mean, let me jump in. If the underlying argument wasn't insane, that's actually not an insane proposition of law, right? Like the, the republication, reaffirmation of a statement, right, that's pretty similar to Eugene Carroll's claims, right, um, you've taken a claim and resurrected it and sort of brought it back up by, by reaffirming. I'm not trying to, I guess I, I guess I'm like, I feel so bad here that I'm, I'm intervening on behalf of of Donald Trump's idiot lawyers, but, uh, what do think? Yeah.

0:08:35 Liz: Don't think so. Cause the statement was totally anodyne. They just said, we, we affirmed our prize. They didn't say all of, you know, they didn't, they Didn't say, and Donald Trump is a big Russia hoaxer. Right. They didn't do, they did say any of those things. They had a two paragraph that's thing that said we investigated and we're not revoking the prize, but okay. Look,

0:08:42 Andrew: Oh. Yeah. Yep. No, no, no. We you're a hundred percent correct with respect to that, that the right difference between republication and "we investigate and we stand by the original report" like that, that makes total sense to Me.

0:09:06 Liz: So, okay. None of the rest of this is going to make sense. So it's good that you're starting from a position of strength, right? Because this case is basically a re-airing of Trump's four-year Twitter rant, like in case you missed waking up to that insanity every day. He just, he screams about the Steele dossier, and you didn't know, me neither. He screams about the Russia collusion hoax and the media being out to get him. He blames Hillary Clinton for the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation and whines that his campaign never had any contact with Russian agents, which is like nonsense. Don Jr. really did meet with an attorney for the Kremlin who promised him dirt on Hillary Clinton in exchange for lifting sanctions on Russian oligarchs. Jeff Sessions really did chit-chat with the Russian ambassador and forget to mention it.

And plus, there was that whole unfortunate misunderstanding when Mike Flynn secretly promised the Russian ambassador that Trump would lift the sanctions if Russia would cooperate with us at the UN. And then he lied about it when the FBI picked him up on a wire and tap came knocking on his door to ask about it. But, or as Trump's crab wine attorneys put it, Flynn was, quote, forced into resignation before the truth could be uncovered, which is, which is a nice touch, okay.

0:09:09 Andrew: Good.

0:09:18 Andrew: We did not.

0:10:07 Andrew: Wow.

0:10:08 Liz: Yeah.

0:10:08 Thomas: What is all this, because I thought the report, the Mueller report, just printed said no collusion. It was just two word report. Said no collusion am

0:10:09 Liz: Yeah. It was just a two-word report and he just handed it off to Congress and Congress was like good job. No, well, no, that's that was Bill Barr's version of the offense. So sure, um, whatever, we've all heard this song before here on planet Earth. None of that reporting was ever proven false, and the DOJ's inspector general's report concluded that the Russia investigation was appropriately predicated. So when Trump's lawyers claim that the Times and the Post articles, quote, leave the reader with the intended impression that the investigation was authentic and not, as is now known, a worthless lie based on manufactured political disinformation paid for by the Clinton campaign. They are full of crap.

0:10:17 Thomas: Yeah. Well,

0:10:49 Andrew: Yeah.

0:10:49 Liz: So here, let me read you a couple of these supposedly defamatory statements. You tell me if you think this is defamator. The FBI, as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee, is investigating Russian interference in the election and alleged contacts between Trump's associates and the Kremlin. Full stop. That, yeah, it did. It did happen, right? Okay, here's another one. Former Deputy Attorney General and Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and other officials were aware of an FBI investigation looking at possible contacts between Trump's associates and Russia. That happened, right.

0:11:04 Andrew: Well, that happened.

0:11:21 Andrew: Those are listed as examples of the defamatory statements that are in the Mueller report.

0:11:26 Liz: Why would I lie? Of course that's in there. Yeah, no, that's, yeah.

0:11:29 Thomas: But if nothing else why

0:11:30 Liz: They've got nothing.

0:11:30 Thomas: Would anyone have won a Pulitzer for those statements like is there's got to be more to it

0:11:33 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:34 Liz: No, look, there was a lot of other stuff. What's he going gonna say like

0:11:35 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:36 Andrew: That is a The sun rose in the east, like,

0:11:39 Thomas: You're

0:11:40 Liz: Well, what's he gonna say, like, "You wrote about my kid"? You know, saying, if it's what you say it is, "I love it, especially in the spring," when he was promised, you know, purloined Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton. I mean, he's not gonna write that, so he had to write all of this other nonsense stuff. But like, whatever, these are both objectively true statements of fact, or they were when they were written, and they're not remotely in the neighborhood of defamation. So he's also very mad about reporting that he attempted to to obstruct the Mueller investigation. Like, my dude, we were all there when Mueller said, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so, right? So yes, there was a whole lot of evidence that he tried to obstruct a Mueller investigation, and the fact that Congress refused to do anything about it is neither here nor there. Like that just happened. So anyway, that's

0:12:27 Andrew: Well, maybe like Every Republican member of Congress, he didn't read volume two of the Mueller report because

0:12:34 Liz: Entirely possible. He's not really known for being a big reader.

0:12:35 Thomas: The only one who did, Andrew. I'm sorry, I hate to break it to you, you're literally the only person

0:12:37 Andrew: Shows the nine different ways in which Trump obstructed the investigation, like, yeah, if you just read volume one, you get the, gosh, these are bumbling idiots, uh, but I guess they're not criminal bumbling idiots, except for the way they bumbled through criminally trying to prevent me from telling you what idiots they were. And that second, second half is all volume two.

0:13:02 Liz: Right.

0:13:02 Andrew: But

0:13:03 Liz: Okay. So Trump's argument is that the Pulitzer Prize is so prestigious that it confers an imprimatur of approval on the recipient's work, which is tantamount to restatement of these supposedly defamatory articles. And when the board said over the summer that it wasn't going to rescind the prizes, it was another restatement. And that is defamation, which conveys the quote, intended false implication that the awarded articles had correctly reported on the Russia collusion hoax. And you guys can't see the complaint, but you know how Trump has that that weird tick where he, like, capitalizes random words, it's in the complaint. Like, his lawyers have also picked up. Or perhaps he drafted the damn thing himself.

0:13:35 Thomas: What I was gonna say, it's not like he's writing the complaint, did he, is he dictating this to them or something

0:13:42 Liz: I, I mean, I, you know, I've read a lot of his complaints. I wouldn't swear that he doesn't write them because they're all insane. But okay, whatever. In Trump's telling, no independent review could possibly have concluded that the original reporting was correct. And thus, you must infer that the board has, quote, And no, they will not be taking further questions on this.

0:13:49 Thomas: Do

0:14:06 Andrew: OK.

0:14:06 Liz: You'll just have to take their word for it that the board, quote, held back the specific results of the review from publication in the Pulitzer statement to shield themselves from criticism, conceal the inherent bias of the sham review process, and ultimately to resurrect the debunked Russia collusion hoax in which they were so heavily invested. Contested. Okay. And this, according to Trump's Weiner Web lawyers, amounts to defamation by implication. Ta-da, there's your defamatory statement.

0:14:25 Andrew: OK. So this, we have talked about pleading standards and how in the early 2000s, 2000s, they were sort of beefed up in federal court to make it easier to move to dismiss where somebody has a plausible sounding allegation if you squint, but, you know, but really has come with nothing more than that, right? That's the Twombly and Iqbal standard that we've talked about in a couple of examples. And this is the perfect illustration of why that standard applies in federal court. You must, that at least, allege sufficient facts as to give rise to a plausible cause of action, because, at least, I mean, what you just described was the board, an allegation that, yes, you did, the Pulitzer Prize board, quote, hold back the specific results of the review from publication to shield yourselves from criticism, end of quote, and how would one even begin to go, go about defending one's selves from that? Chart, right? Like, no, we, like, it

0:15:32 Thomas: You. File a reply of nuh-uh, a rid of N'uh.

0:15:40 Liz: Right. Guess you could, if you were the board, say, okay, so we farmed it out to these esteemed journalists or esteemed journalism professors or whatever. I suppose that they could. Just the whole thing is nonsense. I mean, it's, you know, they didn't defame him the first time. They didn't defame them by saying, we're not going to retract it. The whole thing is, you're right, it's a Twombly nightmare. It's not going to survive.

0:15:58 Andrew: Right,

0:16:04 Thomas: Me, just, just for fun, I do want, want to grab a hold of this with a type of a more sympathetic hypothetical. You let's say the, somebody gives an award to, uh, Charlie Kirk, you know, for something actually libelous or whatever, that Hunter Biden killed somebody, whatever it might be, something like that, and they, some other organization gives them an award for that reporting, um, and we're just assuming it's totally, you slander, libel, whatever. Could that endorsement award be seen as, uh, slander or libel? Or, and then therefore, if challenged on it and they say, "No, we stand by that award," could that not be seen as a further act of libel?

0:16:36 Liz: It so attenuated, right? I mean a normal person when faced with what Trump is calling slanderous statements would have sued the Post and the Times, right. He's not only time barred on that, he couldn't win, right, Right. So he's he's saying he's making this totally attenuated, you know, it's basically a fundraising lawsuit. I'm not I'm sure he can't possibly believe that this is really going to go anywhere. I mean, yes, I suppose that in your hypothetical of the, you know, the Charlie Kirk liberal tears, Hunter Biden dick pics award for journalism. Presumably they could say, you know, if Charlie Kirk was presenting this award and said, you know, this is very true and you've exposed all of these liberal lies. Perhaps he could be sued for his statements about the award. You know, he could, he Could be sued if he said this proves that, you know Hillary Clinton drinks baby blood or whatever nonsense thing that they believe. But this is this is not that this is an attenuated attempt. To I'm get around the fact that he failed to sue in timely fashion and has no real claim.

0:16:38 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:17:12 Thomas: Would

0:16:46 Andrew: Right, right! Yeah, yeah. And I think previous your answer, I just want to reiterate, It was really, really good on the difference between republication. Right. And just we stand by our original reporting, because in my head I was sort of trying to unpack that because, you know, you do have that response when you get a frivolous cease and desist letter. Right? So somebody I write, you know, we publish something on O.A. now. A year from now, somebody discovers it, sends us a cease and desist. And we say, no, we're we're yeah, we've we've listened. We've received your letter. We don't think this was defamatory in any way. We stand by our original reporting. That shouldn't continue. You know, every time someone does that, that shouldn't restart the statute of limitations. And and the distinction, I think the really, really good one that you gave Liz that, you know, for example, in the Eugene Carroll case was he didn't just say, I stand by my prior comments.

0:17:41 Liz: Right.

0:18:36 Andrew: He he repeated those gross—that you know, we don't need to repeat them here. Yeah, exactly. And that, that's that's the real distinction that you can say on x date, you Trump said y statement, and he can't do that with the uh the Pulitzer Prize committee here. So I agree with you.

0:18:53 Liz: Well, I'm glad that we had fun with that because that was batshit enough. But wait, there is more because these crab claws.

0:18:58 Andrew: God. There can't be more.

0:18:59 Liz: Oh, yes, there it is, because these crab claws actually had the temerity to file this case in Okeechobee County Circuit Court, where exactly none of the parties live. Naturally, Trump has sued all the board members in their personal capacities. And Neil Brown, the president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and the president of this board, the co-president, lives in Pinellas County in St. Petersburg, which is, by coincidence, where Trump's lawyers practice law. And Trump himself lives in Palm Beach County. But neither the Pulitzer Board, which has housed at Columbia University, nor any of the other members bears any relationship to the state of Florida. Nevertheless, Trump insists that these parties have all subjected themselves to personal jurisdiction under Florida's long-arm statute by dint of having published the allegedly defamatory statements online in response to statements made by Trump and, quote, expressly aimed at damaging plaintiffs' personal, business, and political relationships in Florida.

0:19:54 Liz: And the Okeechobee County Courthouse is the appropriate venue for this windmill tilt because, quote. The defamatory publication was accessed by third parties in Okeechobee County. You will be shocked to discover that they're presenting zero evidence that any of the 40,000 residents of Okeechobee County ever saw the defamatory statement on the Pulitzer website. Like, who is reading the Pulitzers, you know, board's website? But maybe, let's give them credit, maybe one of Wendy Webb's paralegals was dispatched to drive 170 miles east to pull the offending document up on his phone. Like, Who the hell even knows? They're saying that somebody in in Okeechobee County, read it. Could be true. No one knows. But presumably they have a particular judge in mind for this case in some rinky dink little courthouse, or possibly they anticipate getting removed to federal court on diversity grounds because most most of the defendants are New York or Maryland residents, some Virginia and Pennsylvania. And Trump, the plaintiff, lives in Florida.

So anyway, but mostly I think that they'd like to get as far away from Palm Beach as possible, not only to maximize the chances that they end up in front of Federalist Society weirdo Judge Aileen Cannon, who's right next door to Okeechobee in Fort Pierce, but also to avoid Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who is in the middle of sanctioning Alina Haba for that insane RICO clown suit against Hillary Clinton and James Comey.

0:20:28 Andrew: It

0:21:14 Liz: Particularly because when New York Attorney General Tish James removed that stupid lawsuit from state to federal court, it landed on Judge Middlebrook's docket. And I'm guessing those crab claws people do not want that smoke. But Andrew, you're a federal practitioner. What do you think of this beautiful CivPro issue spotter these loons have bestowed upon us?

0:21:32 Andrew: This really is like an exam in Civ Pro. So let's break it down.

0:21:37 Thomas: They ask you this stupid a question in an exam that feels. They

0:21:41 Liz: Oh, yeah, they would. They would because they would be like, here's like 100, you know, here'S a hundred word question. And you can you can spend three hours writing this up because it is like wrong in 50 different ways.

0:21:42 Thomas: Would okay

0:21:51 Andrew: Well, yeah. Yep. So here's the thing. So first, defamation is a state law claim, that's right, why you're in state court. However, when you have lots of out-of-state defendants, right, you think, oh, well, maybe this is diversity jurisdiction, right? Because you have a Florida plaintiff suing a bunch of people who live mostly in Maryland and Virginia, and he's suing for more than $75,000. So that seems to fit the requirements for this to be in federal court on diversity jurisdiction to avoid sort of the out-of-state homerness. But, and this is, Liz, I love you for sort of teeing this up as a CivPro question. She knows exactly what she's asking here. This is an issue that's sort of a sub-aspect of 1332, and that is that all of the parties, you must have what is known as complete diversity between all the parties.

0:21:52 Liz: Right? Right.

0:21:52 Thomas: Oh okay also

0:22:52 Andrew: And so if you have a Florida plaintiff, Donald Trump, and you have one defendant who is also a Florida resident, then you no longer have complete diversity and you wind up in state court. And interestingly enough, the reason I know this like the back of my hand is because I spent a decade representing Lloyd's of London. And in representing Lloyds, the actual entity there are various syndicates which are comprised of real persons in interest. And pre-1987, those were actual human beings. And there usually is one person living in each of the states. And so these huge multi-billion dollar Lloyd's cases wind up going to Podunk County state courts.

0:23:42 Andrew: And I have litigated in a lot of them because you don't have complete diversity between the parties. So that's the first part of the answer. You've got Neil Brown is a Florida resident. So so long as Neil Brown is in the lawsuit, you don't have complete diversity. It's going to get weirder because everybody who's named in a personal capacity is almost certainly going. So you can have two separate things that are going on here. The first is all the non-Florida residents are going to move to dismiss themselves out of this lawsuit because they're going to claim that the long arm statute doesn't apply to them.

They haven't done anything. Right? If I'm a member of the Pulitzer board and I live in Maryland, like, why, why can I be sued in Florida? Right, like I haven't done anything to avail myself of the law of Florida. So um, I really think, before we get into this, is such a nonsense suit, you would think like just t it up, easy, early motion to dismiss. It's been turned into such a cluster bomb here that you're gonna first have to adjudicate who properly belongs in the suit. All right?

And then on top of that you have the defendant's strategy, which usually 99 times out of 100, you know, 999 times out of a thousand, you would say, yeah, let's remove to federal court because federal court judges by and large are more willing to grant pre-answer motions to dismiss. Right? State courts tend to have kind of a like, let's let the plaintiff have their say, you know, their day in court. And federal courts are usually much more uh, no, if you don't meet the Iqbal Trombley standard, get out of here.

0:25:23 Andrew: But if I, if I represented the Pulitzer board here, no chance I would remove to federal court. Can't, as you point out, you can't run the risk of drawing Cannon. That would be nuts. So I would be like, OK, you want to, you want to litigate out here in the Okefenokee swamp or whatever? Like, great. Let's have at it. But I'd have to win the day. Like, there could be lots of different lawyers here. So I love it. CivPro geek out on this hypothetical for the rest of our recording.

0:25:33 Liz: Right.

0:25:51 Liz: Let's, to top it all off, just, I would like to read you guys this paragraph in the conclusion where they asked for a jury trial to assess the grievous damage Trump suffered when the Pulitzer people said, now we're not revoking the prize. And, you know, all half of Okefenokee County, whatever, read it. Okay, so he says, plaintiff's reputation, profession, and business has been damaged by the Pulitzer's statement because the Pulitzer's statement wrongfully implies criminal, wrongful, and an un-American conduct, unbecoming plaintiff's position as the duly elected president of the United States, his profession as a businessman and candidate for president. I'm sorry, who was the duly elected president of the United States in July of 2022 when this supposedly defamatory statement was made? I don't think it was Donald Trump. And Trump didn't even declare his candidacy until like 10 minutes ago.

0:26:36 Liz: But like, whatever. Surely the Pulitzer people are going to have to delete the statement from their website and pay Trump a billion dollars to compensate for his, his ruined reputation. Like, okay, this is, you know, this is right up there with that suit against Tish James. It's not, I don't think it's quite there because it doesn't, you know, doesn't implicate sovereign immunity, but it's a good one.

0:26:56 Thomas: Isn't the the opposite of true? Like, well, it wouldn't have been defamatory except, you know, he's the president. So it is like, what, isn't it the opposite? Like the standard is harder to to meet with the most, the public figure in the entire earth.

0:27:09 Liz: I don't know. I, do you think he still thinks he's president, or just like, he's just like this lunatic shouting from a golf cart? And I donno. But I know that it's job security for me, since my job is to read these lawsuits, and he's apparently going to file one a month until we're all, all dead, you know, until the earth.

0:27:26 Thomas: You is okay are his lawyers just bilking him for money? Is that all this is? Do they, are they in on it? Because that would be pretty great if they're like, I'm gonna cash, I don't want to be a lawyer anymore, I'm tired of this profession, I'm going to file dumb lawsuit after dumb lawsuit get paid by Trump

0:27:41 Liz: It's a good way to do it, considering how

0:27:43 Andrew: To no longer be a member of the profession

0:27:43 Liz: They all wind up.

0:27:43 Thomas: Yeah and then until I get disbarred.

0:27:45 Liz: Right. Since they all lined up with bar complaints. Yeah. Yeah, I

0:27:48 Thomas: Yeah. Well, we've seen that it takes way too long to get disbarred, no matter how hard you try. It takes a lot longer than I would hope.

0:27:54 Liz: Yeah yeah. It absolutely does. And I and I do think that's one of the, you know, perhaps the only positive effect of the Trump presidency, that bar bar associations are like, I think we maybe really do need to police our our members, because this is not acceptable. But that's a discussion for another day. Why do I think they filed this lawsuit? I think that there are just so many people who have been, you know, brain poisoned by Trump, and they believe that the world is out to get Donald Trump, and they're going to right these wrongs some sort of way. I don't think this is going to be it. But that appears to me to be what they believe. I do not think that they're just bilking him. I really do think these people believe what they are writing.

0:28:30 Thomas: Yeah, it's part of their world building. They're like, let's create an immersive world in which Donald Trump is still president and everybody else is evil and wrong and out to get him. And as part of that effort, you know, it's like putting up a bunch of decorations for a haunted house. Like, oh, yeah, and here's suit, see these people, they screwed us this way, and here's a lawsuit. It's, yeah, they're committed to the bit.

0:28:52 Liz: They are definitely committed to the bit, as is Donald Trump.

0:28:55 Thomas: Many of his NFTs did you buy, Liz? Did you get any of those? Get a hold of them? I

0:28:59 Liz: You know, I was too late and I had to buy it on the secondary market for $24,000. Sorry, kids. I hope you enjoyed the first year of college. It's going to take a while for you to get back now.

0:29:09 Thomas: Bought it on the take a screenshot market, and it was free. I think that's worth as much as the

0:29:14 Liz: Which one did you get? Did you get like the cowboy or the Indian or the astronaut?

0:29:20 Thomas: Oh boy, I want, listener Thomas S requests, if there's anything to the claims that he, like, stole those pictures from anywhere, I request a Liz Dye segment on that.

0:29:31 Andrew: Two votes.

0:29:32 Liz: Is that a thing?

0:29:33 Andrew: Yeah, the The superhero one has the, like, Rob Liefeld from the 90s, like 12 pack abs to it there. There is no doubt that stolen from someone's, fantasy superhero somewhere. Right. Right. I

0:29:48 Liz: Are you insinuating that Donald Trump doesn't have 12-pack abs?

0:29:51 Andrew: I'm insinuating that human beings do not have the, like, muscles on top of muscles that you draw to.

0:29:58 Thomas: I'm insinuating that the team that thought it was a good idea to release NFTs in Trump's calendar, December 2022, maybe didn't do their due diligence on whether or not they stole their art. But we'll have to follow up. I guess homework.

0:30:10 Andrew: They have 12 pack brains. Yeah. All right.

0:30:20 Thomas: Should you accept it, Liz? Uh, that was a lot of fun. So uh, in the end, uh, what's your prediction? You think this, uh, the, is Pulitzer board's gonna, you know, retract their awards or no, no, but for real, what's the next step of this, what's

0:30:23 Liz: Awesome. I do not. I think that these people will probably not be all that interested in litigating in Okeechobee County. So, you know, perhaps they'll try and get moved to a forum less non-convenience. But who knows? Who knows? I do think that they're going to try and avoid Judge Cannon with every fiber of their being.

0:30:53 Andrew: Yeah, I don't, I do not. I mean, we talked about personal jurisdiction, we talked about diversity, but don't see how venue is appropriate in Okeechobee County. I think, I think I agree with you that first step is probably motion to transfer, along with a whole bunch of, you have to do is you have, have to specially appear without actually appearing, and then move to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. I've done this before.

0:31:15 Thomas: Because otherwise if you appear, then you, like, are in the, yeah, yeah, well, to us non-lawyers.

0:31:23 Andrew: You are taking advantage of the Florida legal system. Yeah.

0:31:25 Liz: Yeah.

0:31:27 Thomas: I, you know, we don't know the order of operations here. Like, do you get to just say, hey, this is a bullshit dumb thing, and they're like, like, yeah, you're right, dismiss. Or you first have to settle the question of like, should we be here in Oshkosh, Bukash, whatever county you said.

0:31:41 Liz: It's a PEMDAS thing. And. You do have to say like, no, you're not my daddy. That's the first motion is pretty

0:31:45 Thomas: So he turns in a complaint. He files a complaint that's just feces. Like it's literally just a blank page with feces on it. And they're like, OK, we can't just dismiss this. We have to like first, Hey, this isn't the feces should not be evaluated in this particular jurisdiction. Like you have to do that first. And then once you've settled that, you can be like, just it's juste a piece of shit on a page. There's nothing. It's funny that you have to do first step, I guess.

0:31:55 Liz: Much always. Yeah. Like every month, once a month.

0:32:12 Liz: No. Before that, the defendant says, I am not a piece of shit and I do not have to answer this piece of Shit. And then, then they, you know, you, you aren't my daddy. And Then you say, this is not the forum for the piece of and then after that you say hello judge, judge, this is a piece of shit. That's that's the PEMDAS for this.

0:32:30 Thomas: Let's flush it. All right.

0:32:32 Liz: Yeah, flush it.

0:32:33 Thomas: All Right, all right, thanks as always, that's a tonne fun, can't wait till the next uh lol suit, I think you snuck in another uh name for these, ridiculous, oh, clown suit, yeah, another clown suit, another lol suit, until next time, thanks so much for joining us as always.

0:32:33 Andrew: Are

0:32:45 Liz: All All right. See you guys next week.

0:32:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:48 Clip: Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar will eat you.

0:32:53 Thomas: And now it's time for T3BE. Thomas takes the bar exam, or Thomas runs into the wall. That is really inaccessible language, I think, uh. Andrew, Andrew, this was a great prank. Really funny. Hilarious. I was so amused. Had a great time. What was this nonsense?

0:33:12 Andrew: Question. Question, if the seller of real property under a general warranty deed hears from the buyer that a party is attempting to evict the grantee, what must the seller do? So before we get into the answers, a couple, A, I want to say a lot of people play along on social media, including Twitter, even as Twitter collapses into a fireball of itself. And yes, we have, we are pending on Mastodon and Post. And we're trying to figure out what comes next.

0:33:41 Thomas: We'll figure it out.

0:33:43 Andrew: So we'll we'll figure it out.

0:33:43 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know. Well, Elon

0:33:45 Andrew: These are hard times.

0:33:45 Thomas: Musk held a poll, Andrew, and the poll says he shouldn't be in charge anymore. So and he said he would stick to to the poll. So, yeah, never.

0:33:46 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, and I'm sure Elon Musk would never lie to us. So there we go. So here were the two kind of critical pieces of information that of which I you maybe were not aware and which will make the question a lot easier. So the first is, and I thought you might kind of pull this up by implication, seller of real property under a general warranty, right? So a general guarantee deed is discriminated, is distinguished from the quick claim deed that we discussed in the immediately prior question, right? Right. So a quick claim deed says, I don't know how many sticks I got, but I'm going to give them all to you.

Right. A general warranty deed says, oh, I warrant that I have good title to this property and I convey it to you in fee simple throughout the entire chain of the title. OK, so if I give this to you and then you discover in 1834 that something was improperly recorded and, you know, the ghost of some of whomever has a right of way, you can come back and sue me because I have promised that I am giving you good title to the property throughout the lifetime of the deed. Right. Throughout the lifetime of the property.

0:34:27 Thomas: Mm hmm.

0:35:11 Andrew: That's what a general warranty means.

0:35:13 Thomas: OK, so it's saying I warrant I have all the sticks. I am the holder of the sticks, giving

0:35:18 Andrew: Right. I warrant that I have all the sticks and I'm giving you all thesticks.

0:35:22 Thomas: You all the sticks. And if you figure out there's a beaver somewhere that has one of the sticks throughout time.

0:35:26 Andrew: It's it's your responsibility to go club that beaver to death. Take back the stick and give it to me. So that was sort of fact number one that was embedded in there that might that change your answer. Here's from the buyer. This is really sneaky that a party is attempting to evict the grantee. What must the seller do? And you're like. Wait, wait, what? What? What. Where's the grantEE? Where did that come from?

0:35:35 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. I don't, that is what got me. I don'T know what the hell that is.

0:35:52 Andrew: GrantEE is the buyer? It's just another name. They're the person being granted the title. So if you hear from the buyer that they are attempted, that someone is attempting to evict them, what must you do? And now the answer back from general warranty is obviously you got to do something, right? Right. Like you've you haven't just said, I'm giving you this property, whatever it is. You said, you given you clear title. And now they say, oh, but somebody just said they're trying to evict me.

0:36:22 Thomas: Oh, there's family living here. Pack of wild people that I didn'T know.

0:36:27 Andrew: Who knows what they are? We we have no idea what the party is.

0:36:27 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. And also the other trick Is seller and so this is already done. This transaction is already down. Okay. That's, yeah.

0:36:35 Andrew: Yep. Again, remember, think about it like buying your house. The property may be sold, but not closed. Right, so you've agreed

0:36:42 Thomas: But I don't think there's ever a time that I know of where you could be in the position to be evicted but you haven't closed yet, that's weird, I'm

0:36:42 Andrew: Um I agree that that's weird

0:36:53 Thomas: Sure It exists somehow but yeah, that's Not, that's yet another reason why I didn't know what the fuck was happening in This stupid question, well

0:36:53 Andrew: Yeah It So I love, so a lot of people played along, a lot of people, uh, answered You Know Well

0:37:05 Thomas: Here Hold on Hold On, let me, let me try, now that I think I kind of at least understand what the effing words say, just for fun. This is like a double or nothing. Now let's see how I would answer. From what you've laid out, that person said there are definitely no, not any family of beavers that live on this property that are, and then the guy goes and somehow lives there. But then the beavers are like, hey, this is our house. What are you talking about? We own this. So now the seller, as you say, they definitely have a responsibility. Responsibility. So perform under one of the future real covenants. I wonder if that's still nonsense. Seems like my answer of a nothing grantee now holds title is, well, that's not impossible, but it doesn't sound right. It seems like that would be if you gave the warranty and then you sell it to them and then you're like, ah, I'm out of here. And then you just, you disappear like the guy who sold the monorail to, to the Simpsons or whatever. Uh, let's see.

0:37:16 Andrew: Uh

0:38:04 Thomas: So, or nothing if the person attempting to evict succeeds. Wow, uh, I still don't know, what I still don't, what the answer is, Andrew. Oh well, now it seems like maybe it could be C, because for all we know, the whoever's trying to evict the grantee is just a troublemaker with no client. Like if somebody, somebody comes to my door and just like, get out of here. Maybe that doesn't, maybe you don't have any obligation as the general warranty person until they actually succeed in doing it. So maybe I would switch to C, but geez, I'm still not sure.

0:38:38 Andrew: Correct answer is, in fact, B, perform under one of the future real real covenants And, and the reason that that distinguishes that, uh, from everything that was, so D is the opposite of true, right, like nothing If The person attempted, because you've, you've Now conveyed the opposite of Of A of, of good title, uh, for the same reason A is not, the grantee does not now hold a clear title, because, um, you've got somebody attempting to cloud that title, right. So the question is, do they have to take on the burden themselves? That's what C would be. Or do you, as the person who is furnishing a general warranty deed, have to take on the burden of defending that person having the right to be there? And the answer, when you think about it that way, so the person that I think really best illustrated that reasoning is our good friend, April Poff. We try not to pick.

0:38:43 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yep. Finders keepers. Yeah.

0:39:36 Thomas: No,

0:39:36 Andrew: Yeah, we try not to pick friends and longtime listeners because, you know, don't want anybody to think there's a thumb on the scale.

0:39:41 Thomas: That's so nice because I am deeply embarrassed and humiliated by this question and there's nobody that comforts me more than April Poff. That's a, wow, that's a blessing right now. I appreciate that.

0:39:51 Andrew: She's she is. She's wonderful. We

0:39:53 Thomas: Delightful.

0:39:53 Andrew: Love you, April. She writes, I am a non-lawyer and my answer is B simply because all the other answers are nothing. And it just feels like there's something one should be done with this information. And I love that.

0:40:04 Thomas: Yeah. Fine.

0:40:06 Andrew: Super simple, directly to the point and correct. So you should all be following April on Twitter anyway. She is at V.A. Dawn 13. And congratulations, April, on being this week's winner. Long overdue.

0:40:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:22 Thomas: What does perform under one of the future real covenants even mean, Andrew? What does that mean? What's a future real covenant?

0:40:32 Andrew: So. So what would happen is. So a covenant is a restriction that runs with the land. Right. Like a permanent right of way or something like that. It's not presently in the title. Right? But it would be a future covenant added to the title if they are, in fact, correct in their attempt to evict. But the important part is possibility of its existence is what triggers the immediate obligation on your behalf. Right. If you get a general warranty deed to property and then somebody comes by and is trying to evict you, You can go back to the Grand Tour and go, hey, you promised me that I would own this fee simple, free and clear. Fix it. Make this asshole go away. So that's would be is come back and do something.

0:41:25 Thomas: Fine. But good job, April. I cannot not think of someone that I'm more happy to have won when I was so thoroughly embarrassed than April Poff. So congratulations.

0:41:35 Andrew: Sorry,

0:41:36 Clip: Thank you for being a friend, yeah, travel down the road with me, say we started from the bottom now we're here girl,

0:41:45 Thomas: And now it's time to thank our Hall of Famers, our all-time greats on patreon.com/law. We are on the third quartile, I believe. And Andrew, why don't you you start us off.

0:41:54 Andrew: Big thank you to Pablo Escargot's Heroin Snails. Don Quixote. Don't laugh. Donkey Hody may deliver you a swift kick in the ass. I learned the name of the book, okay? Brian K. Okay, forget Seattle. I'll fly to Sacramento. We got to do this live show before Skambert arrives, or it'll be 2024. You know, maybe. Penelope is glad Sydney got sanctioned for terpsichoree. Angry Macface. Conrad Michaels forever. Yep. Speak of the devil. April Poff, off, but, uh, again, uh, being a Hall of Fame patron does does not get you a thumb on the scale. Abortion is pro-life. This is not the greatest patron name. No, this is just a tribute. Sir Wilfred Snibble Snabble of the Gribble Pibble the Dows, the verified Opening Arguments parody account.

0:41:57 Thomas: Wow. Cool.

0:42:43 Andrew: Nice. Jake, New York's electoral fusion and judicial elections combined to give me 10 candidates. It's for 10 races, all running as both Democrat and Republican. Yeah, New York is weird, man. It's just it's just weird. Men of quality do not fear equality. Christopher Brown, Carl, Jack, R.

0:43:01 Thomas: And.

0:43:01 Andrew: Willie, be aware of puppy scams. Adoption or purchasing online people can be the worst. Vaccinated Aussie in Germany. If I get the next T3BE right, can you top up my supply of Vegemite and Tim Tams, please? Please, Darth Mandy Pants, Learned Handjob, Copyright 2022, All Rights Reserved, Lou, and Seattle Pete, take it away, Thomas.

0:43:24 Thomas: Thank you to Robert M. Bob Blah Blah's Law Podcast Impossible, Hamburglar Society, Weird Cuddlism is a religious belief about being sincerely held. Ball Arena live show with the cup, boy, poor, uh, those those that team, uh, Colorado, lots of injuries, they're not not doing great. I believe in them, though. I would never bet against the Avalanche these days. Pauly Hernandez. I'm even faster at sex. All right. We got a race to the bottom there. Jason Kopas. Fred from Colorado. Keep Colorado an abortion access haven with LGBTQ legal protection. Support Colorado State House Dems. Bob Coburn. Unemployed hacker for hire. Stop calling him Uncle Frank. Nate Drex has to call him dad. You do not like treason. So you say. Try it. Try it and you may.

0:44:13 Thomas: CivilPoliticsRadio.com, Fridays at 7pm Eastern on Valley Free Radio. John Bilderbeck. Dasvidaniya, Comrade Michaels. Ian Hamilton. Philly Basement Bar raises a toast to everyone who volunteered this election cycle and offers you a free pint. Nice, go find that Philly basement bar, everybody. Jennifer Kratch, Stop Aluata Slander. Jeff Galback, It's not illegal to hope bad things happen to Samuel Alito. Balticate, hashtag Mastodon migration, I'm now at twit.social slash at Balticate, that's So complicated, I just am not doing Mastadon. I'm sorry, we might do post, I just, I don't know, I won't speak for you, Andrew, but we'll see. Forgot to change my name last month because we have a new puppy. Oh, that's last one, congratulations on the new puppy. Thank you so much, everybody, enjoy the goodies, the uh Law'd Awful Movies, that's out. That was so much fun. The Q&A that you got the audio of if you're patron, and the ad-free shows, each and every show. Really looking forward to tomorrow's show regarding this news, this Trump news, this this criminal referral. Can't wait.

0:44:45 Andrew: Sure.

0:45:19 Andrew: Until

0:45:19 Thomas: To talk more about it, Andrew. I'll see you then.

0:45:19 Andrew: Then.

0:45:23 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

0:45:56 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.