On Friday, September 19, a federal district judge in Florida struck President Donald Trump’s complaint in his $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, four Times reporters, and Penguin Random House, describing the complaint as “decidedly improper and impermissible.” Under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a complaint is supposed to include “a short and plain statement” alleging enough facts that, if true, could warrant legal relief. The complaint Trump filed on Monday, by contrast, is 85 pages long and reads more like an anthology of his Truth Social posts, with slightly better punctuation.
Most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not get tossed under Rule 8, but most complaints filed in federal courtrooms do not spend dozens of pages recounting, as Trump’s does, the plaintiff’s “singular brilliance” and “history-making media appearances” in programs like Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson. Trump’s complaint is also crowded with boasts about his purported magnificence (for example, “President Trump secured the greatest personal and political achievement in American history”) and snipes about legacy media’s anti-Trump bias (for example, “Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way”).
Friday’s order, in turn, is full of the judge’s unmasked exhaustion. “As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective,” wrote Steven Merryday, a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. “This complaint stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8.” Merryday gave Trump 28 days to amend the complaint and come back with something less ridiculous, and not exceeding forty pages. “This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner,” he wrote.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
This is probably not the warm reception Trump expected when he decided to file in the Tampa Division of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida—instead of, say, Washington, D.C., where he lives, or New York, where the Times is based. Trump’s complaint says that he chose to do so because Trump is a citizen of Florida, the defendants sell their published writing in Florida, and Floridians access and read their work.
But there is a simpler explanation: forum shopping, the practice of choosing where to file a lawsuit in order to get a more favorable outcome. The knowledge that some judges are more sympathetic to particular causes than others is why, for example, every unwashed misogynist who sees a woman making decisions about her own body files a complaint about it in Amarillo, Texas, where they’re all-but-guaranteed to get their case before Judge Matt Kacsmaryk.
And Trump had good reason to be optimistic here, too: Two-thirds of Tampa Division judges are Republican appointees, and half were appointed by Trump himself. The Trump judge who recently gave an award to a student for arguing that the Constitution only applies to white people and the Trump judge who struck down the mask mandate on planes during the height of the pandemic both sit in Tampa.
Forum shopping undermines the integrity of the legal system, such as it exists, because litigants go out of their way (sometimes literally!) to secure a friendly decisionmaker. The federal judiciary’s policymaking body came up with new rules last year in order to curb the practice, but quickly backed off after frequently-shopped-for judges caught an attitude. Litigants like Trump are thus free to continue trying to game the system in this manner.
Trump’s lawsuit against the Times is a reminder to all the forum shoppers out there, though, that they don’t always get what they pay for. He did get a federal judge in Florida appointed by a Republican president. But it looks like he got one with some respect for himself and the federal judiciary—or who, at the very least, doesn’t think odes to “the world-renowned Trump brand that consumers have long associated with excellence, luxury, and success” belong in legal filings.
