Court Digest

New York
Judge rules Trump in 2019 defamed writer who has already won a sex abuse and libel suit against him
NEW YORK (AP) — Four months after a jury found that Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that still more of the ex-president’s comments about her were libelous. The decision means that an upcoming second civil trial will concern only how much more he has to pay her.

The ruling stands to streamline significantly the second trial, set for January. It concerns remarks that Trump made in 2019, after Carroll first publicly claimed that Trump sexually attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room in the 1990s, which he denies.

The first trial, this spring, concerned the sexual assault allegation itself and whether more recent Trump comments were defamatory. Jurors awarded Carroll $5 million, finding that she was sexually abused but rejecting her allegation that she was raped.

“The jury considered and decided issues that are common to both cases — including whether Mr. Trump falsely accused Ms. Carroll of fabricating her sexual assault charge and, if that were so, that he did it with knowledge that this accusation was false” or acted with reckless disregard for the truth, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in Wednesday’s decision.

The judge said the jury’s May verdict, by finding that Trump had indeed sexually abused Carroll, effectively established that his 2019 statements also were false and defamatory.

Carroll and her attorneys “look forward to trial limited to damages for the original defamatory statements Donald Trump made,” said her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who’s not related to the judge.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba said Wednesday that his legal team is confident that the jury verdict will be overturned, mooting the judge’s new decision. Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, also is seeking to delay the second trial.

Illinois
Mobile home park companies sued over conspiring to fix and inflate lot rental prices
CHICAGO (AP) — A lawsuit seeking class-action status accuses nine mobile home community management companies and a mobile home market data provider of conspiring to fix and inflate lot rental prices at more than 150 locations across the U.S.

The lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Chicago claims the management companies bought up mobile home parks and used “competitively sensitive market data” provided by Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Datacomp Appraisal Systems Inc. to exchange pricing information and conspire to raise rents.

“In the face of these significant manufactured home lot rent increases, some manufactured home residents were not only facing severe financial pressures, but even the threat of eviction,” Gregory Asciolla, an attorney with Chicago-based DiCello Levitt, one of the law firms filing the suit, said in a news release.

“These individuals — whose median annual household income is approximately $35,000 — were overcharged for what was meant to be affordable housing,” DiCello Levitt partner Adam Levitt said. “Manufactured home lot rental prices were blatantly inflated at a staggering rate of 9.1% per year between 2019 and 2021.”

Institutional investors led by private equity firms and real estate investment trusts and sometimes funded by pension funds have swooped in to buy mobile home parks.

The purchases have put residents in a bind, since most mobile homes — despite the name — cannot be moved easily or cheaply. Owners are forced to either accept unaffordable rent increases, spend thousands of dollars to move their home, or abandon it and lose tens of thousands of dollars they invested.

Telephone and electronic messages seeking comment were left for Datacomp and its Chicago-based parent company, Equity LifeStyle Properties.

New York
Judge: Maker of rapid-fire triggers falsely told buyers devices are legal
A company that sold triggers that make semi-automatic, AR-15-style rifles fire like automatic weapons likely misled consumers that the devices were legal, and it continued selling them even after being warned by the U.S. government, a federal judge in New York ruled Tuesday.

The judge barred Rare Breed Triggers from selling any more of its forced-reset triggers until further notice — a blow to the company’s defense against the government’s civil fraud lawsuit, which remains pending.

“The Court concludes that the Government is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims,” U.S. District Judge Nina Morrison wrote, adding the company “placed tens of thousands of their customers at risk of criminal prosecution and the loss of their right to own firearms.”

Rare Breed Triggers and its lawyers are disappointed by the ruling and are considering how to respond, said David Warrington, one of the company’s lawyers. He also noted the ruling is not a final decision in the lawsuit.

“It is just a preliminary ruling made on a partial, truncated record,” Warrington said in an email to The Associated Press. “This is just the beginning of a long fight and Rare Breed is assessing its next steps.”

Federal authorities sued the company in January, alleging its FRT-15 triggers qualify as illegal machine guns under federal law and regulations. The government’s lawsuit seeks a permanent ban on selling the triggers.

Rare Breed argues the triggers are legal.

The classification of Rare Breed’s FRT-15 triggers as machine guns by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also is being challenged in a lawsuit filed in Texas by the National Association for Gun Rights.

Forced-reset triggers are among a number of accessories, including bump stocks and auto sears, that increase the firing speed of semiautomatic firearms and have drawn concern from federal and local law enforcement officials worried about mass shootings and other gun violence.

In court filings, the ATF said testing on Rare Breed’s FRT-15s showed their rate of fire can meet or exceed that of the military’s M-16 machine gun, which can fire 700 to 970 rounds a minute. The ATF says the triggers are machine guns because they fire more than one round with one pull of the trigger.

Rare Breed Triggers, founded in Florida and now based in Fargo, North Dakota, has sold about 100,000 FRT-15s since December 2020, taking in $39 million in revenue, according to court filings. The devices have generally been sold at just under $400 apiece and take only minutes to install.

Other representatives of Rare Breed Triggers, including its owner, Kevin Maxwell, and its president, Lawrence DeMonico, did not immediately return messages seeking comment Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace’s office declined to comment.

In court documents, the company argues the ATF’s classification of FRT-15s as automatic weapons is wrong.

Federal officials say Rare Breed knew a predecessor of the FRT-15 had been classified as a machine gun but went ahead and sold the triggers anyway without asking the ATF to evaluate the devices. The company said it consulted with former ATF officials who said they believed the triggers were legal.

The ATF ordered the company to stop selling the triggers shortly after they hit the market.

The ATF has been asking FRT-15 owners to voluntarily turn them over to the agency. In the New York lawsuit, the U.S. attorney asked for an order requiring the company to create a refund program for customers to return the triggers for cash, but the judge denied that request.

At issue in the case is how to apply the National Firearms Act of 1934, as modified in 1968 and 1986.

The law currently bars the public from owning machine guns made in recent decades. It defines machine guns as firearms capable of firing more than one shot with a “single function” of a trigger. Rare Breed Triggers has argued that because its device forces the trigger to return to the start position after each shot, it satisfies the requirement of one “function” per round.


Missouri
Inmate convicted of killing cop says judges shouldn’t get to hand down death sentences
A man awaiting sentencing for killing a Missouri police officer is challenging the constitutionality of a state law that allows judges to hand down the death sentence.

A jury in June convicted 45-year-old Ian McCarthy of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Clinton Police Officer Gary Lee Michael Jr. during a 2017 traffic stop. After days of deliberation, the jury informed the judge that it couldn’t decide between the state’s only two sentences for first-degree murder: life in prison without parole, or death.

Missouri and Indiana are the only states that allow judges to sentence people to die.

McCarthy’s attorneys filed a motion last week asking a Jackson County judge to declare the state law unconstitutional and to sentence McCarthy to life in prison. Judge Marco Roldan will consider the motion at the sentencing hearing on Friday.

The motion calls Missouri “a clear outlier” and states that the law violates the Eighth Amendment guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.

“Unanimous jury agreement is necessary to ensure that death sentences are imposed reliably, on the most culpable defendants, and reflect the judgment of the community,” it states.

Henry County Prosecuting Attorney LaChrisha Gray on Wednesday declined to comment on the constitutional question, but she said she is still seeking the death penalty.

“We will be asking the court to impose that sentence,” Gray said.

Courts have issued varying decisions on whether juries alone should have domain over death sentences.

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentences of at least 150 convicted killers, ruling that juries, and not judges, must make such life-or-death decisions.

But since then, some executions have proceeded despite sentences from the bench. Among those put to death was Missouri inmate Amber McLaughlin, whose execution in January was believed to be the first of a transgender woman in the U.S.

McLaughlin was convicted of first-degree murder for killing a St. Louis-area woman in 2006. A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after the jury deadlocked on the sentence.

In another case, the Missouri Supreme Court in 2019 upheld the sentence for Craig Wood, who was sentenced to death by a judge for kidnapping, raping and killing a 10-year-old girl in 2014. Wood remains on death row and no execution date has been set.

On Aug. 6, 2017, McCarthy used a high-powered rifle to fatally shoot Michael, 37, during a traffic stop in Clinton, about 75 miles (121 kilometers) southeast of Kansas City. McCarthy was captured two days later in a rural area of Henry County.

The court filing on behalf of McCarthy states that since the jury couldn’t reach unanimous agreement on a sentence, McCarthy should have been given life without parole.