A federal judge in Florida struck on Friday President Donald Trump’s $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times, four of its reporters and publisher Penguin Random House, saying the nearly 90-page lawsuit was “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,” wrote Judge Steven D. Merryday, a George H.W. Bush appointee in Tampa.
Trump’s attorneys filed the 85-page lawsuit against the Times, Penguin and journalists Peter Baker, Susanne Craig, Michael Schmidt and Russ Buettner on Monday, accusing them of publishing stories “filled with repugnant distortions and fabrications” about the president.
Trump’s team now has 28 days to file an amended complaint, one that “must not exceed forty pages.”
Merryday is known for his rulings against the Joe Biden-era Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing in 2021 that Florida would be harmed if its cruise ships were restricted from operating in the state.
“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,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement.
“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 said in a statement.
The Times said in a statement earlier this week that the lawsuit “lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting.” Executive editor Joe Kahn added on Thursday that the paper will “fight it and we will win.”
Merryday took issue not with the substance of Trump’s claims, of which he mainly left untouched, but the length and presentation of the 85-page complaint, which he said violated Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The rule requires attorneys to provide “simple, concise and direct” allegations that offer a “short and plain statement of the claim,” a fact Merryday said every attorney before a federal court “is presumed to know.”
He derided the lengthy complaint as laborious, “enervating” and a test of endurance, one that largely consists of “many, often repetitive and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations” to compliment Trump.
“Even assuming that after finally ‘melting’ the defendants’ alleged ‘iceberg of falsehoods’ the plaintiff prevails for each reason alleged in the complaint — even assuming all of that — a complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim for relief,” Merryday wrote.
Trump’s complaint notably relied heavily on NYT articles that preceded his return to the White House. He focused on stories that primarily occurred during his first term or the 2024 campaign, with the sole series of stories cited from his second term centering on his administration’s claims that former President Barack Obama’s administration constructed a false narrative surrounding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
