In 2022, President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against dozens of defendants, including Hillary Clinton, making several claims, including two under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and three under Florida law. The District Court ultimately found that all of these claims were “frivolous” and that the conduct of Trump and his attorney, Alina Habba, were so egregious that they were ordered by the District Court to pay nearly $1 million to the defendants as sanctions (penalties) for how they brought and pursuing such a meritless case. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the penalty.
The purpose of this note is not to talk about the actual merits of the case, such as they were, but instead to show how many ways a plaintiff can screw up their own case.
The most difficult, yet extremely important, course your first semester of law school is called “Civil Procedure.” It outlines in great detail all of the rules you must follow in pursuing your case. It is not unusual to not understand how the rules all work together until two-thirds of the way through the course. However, unless you understand these rules, you are simply not qualified to practice law in the courts.
To appreciate why the million-dollar sanction was imposed, we will look as the exceptionally basic ways in which Trump and Babba violated the rules of civil procedure.
First, a case must be brought in a timely manner. The Statute of Limitations outlines how long you have to file a case, which varies depending on the type of case. The complaint against Clinton et al was filed after the Statute of Limitations had expired. That by itself was enough to kill the case.
Second, when a complaint is filed, the allegations must be “clear and concise.” If your complaint simply throws everything against the wall hoping something will stick, this is called a shotgun pleading. There is an easy way to avoid this problem. If you are claiming different reasons to win, you file these reasons in separate counts. Here, there were five theories, hence five counts.
To make things easier for the court, and to keep the complaint from becoming incredibly long, relevant fact paragraphs from the first count are often “incorporated by reference” in subsequent counts. The key here is that you only incorporate relevant facts into later counts. In this case, count three incorporated 633 paragraphs from the previous counts, whether or not they were relevant to the third count. This is classic shotgun pleading.
Third, a complaint is often amended to add additional information or to correct misstatements from the original complaint. The amended complaint failed to correct a number of misstatements in the original complaint, even though these errors had been brought to the plaintiffs’ attention.
Fifth, once you decide to appeal, the appeal must state ALL of the errors you believe were committed by the district court judge. Any arguments not presented in your appeal documents are considered “waived.” Trump and Babba decided to argue a few of the waived arguments on appeal, which is a basic no-no.
Sixth, supporting arguments on appeal generally have the following format. Appellants (Trump and Babba) file their initial brief in support of their appeal. This brief contains all of their arguments. Appellees (Clinton et al) file their brief in opposition. Appellants then may file a Reply Brief to address arguments made by appellees. Here, Trump and Babba raised entirely new arguments in their reply brief, something that appeals courts view with derision.
Committing even one of these errors is enough to cause the ire of a judge. Commit all six of these (including numerous minor errors that I haven’t bother to mention), and the judges can easily determine that your case is frivolous and brought in bad faith.
When all of these procedural errors were considered, along with ludicrous nature of the underlying arguments, The appellate court had little difficulty in concluding that the District Court judge properly exercised his discretion in imposing the sanction on Trump and Babba.
