Even before The New York Times had the opportunity to formally answer former President Donald Trump’s sprawling defamation lawsuit—an extraordinary filing that extended to eighty-five pages in length—a federal judge intervened decisively, tossing the case aside at the earliest stage. In doing so, the court expressed sharp disapproval of both the length and the tone of the complaint. According to the judge, the document was excessive in scope and burdened with unnecessary commentary.
In a concise yet pointed order issued on Friday, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday explained why the complaint failed at a fundamental level. He observed that every competent attorney, or at least one reasonably expected to adhere to professional standards, understands that a legal complaint is not intended to serve as a stage for rhetorical attacks, inflammatory rhetoric, or unfettered political speech. Rather than functioning as a forum for emotional venting or as a tool of public relations, a complaint must strictly identify legal claims and factual foundations supporting them. To underscore his point, Judge Merryday drew a vivid comparison: a complaint is not a pulpit for political campaigning, a megaphone for publicity stunts, nor a modern reincarnation of London’s famed Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner where all manner of grievances are theatrically aired before the public.
Judge Merryday, who was appointed to the federal bench decades earlier by former President George H. W. Bush, nonetheless afforded Trump’s legal team an opportunity to amend the defective filing. He established a strict deadline of twenty-eight days to submit a revised version of the lawsuit, with the added requirement that the amended complaint be substantially reduced in length and constrained to no more than forty pages.
Despite this setback, Trump’s attorneys immediately signaled their client’s intent to continue pursuing the litigation. A spokesperson for the former president’s legal team declared that Trump fully intended to proceed with what they described as a “powerhouse lawsuit” against The New York Times, its individual reporters, as well as publisher Penguin Random House. The spokesperson emphasized that the revised filing would comply with the judge’s logistical directives concerning length and form but stressed that the underlying claims would remain forcefully presented.
The lawsuit, first filed at the start of the week, accused The New York Times and several of its journalists of defaming Trump. In response to the judicial ruling, however, a representative of The Times welcomed the decision. Speaking to *Business Insider*, the spokesperson for the news organization noted with a measure of satisfaction that the order affirmed what they had perceived from the outset: that the complaint was drafted less as a legal submission designed to establish defamation under the law and more as a political document aimed at airing grievances in a public forum.
The stakes of the lawsuit were considerable. Trump sought an enormous $15 billion in damages, a sum that underscored the seriousness, at least rhetorically, of the allegations. The complaint also targeted Penguin Random House, a major publishing house, over its decision to release a book authored by two New York Times journalists. When reached for comment, representatives of the publisher did not immediately supply a response.
A closer examination of the original complaint showed that it contained not only two counts of defamation but also pages upon pages of extraneous assertions, self-congratulatory statements about Trump’s business acumen and political achievements, and caustic characterizations of the Times itself. Judge Merryday described the document as “tedious and burdensome,” pointing out that it was filled with excessive and highly stylized detail that was repetitious and, in many portions, gratuitously laudatory of the former president without advancing the legal argument. As an illustration of the unnecessary rhetoric embedded in the filing, the judge highlighted a passage branding the Times as the “hopelessly compromised and tarnished ‘Gray Lady,’” language that may resonate in political discourse but carries no legal weight in a formal complaint.
Perhaps most strikingly, Judge Merryday observed that while the lawsuit formally contained two defamation claims, the first of these was not addressed in any substantive way until page eighty of an eighty-five-page filing. Such an approach placed a disproportionate emphasis on political theater rather than legal precision. In his judgment, that fact alone illustrated why the document was, in his words, “decidedly improper and impermissible” under the federal rules of civil procedure.
He further reminded the attorneys involved that while courts permit a modest degree of stylistic expression and narrative latitude in pleadings, such tolerance has its boundaries. In this circumstance, Trump’s complaint had strayed well beyond the permissible limits, transforming a legal instrument into, effectively, an unwieldy political manifesto. The judge’s ruling, therefore, serves not just as a rebuke of the specific filing at issue but also as a broader reminder of a foundational legal principle: in the judicial arena, clarity and concision prevail over verbosity and spectacle.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-tosses-trump-defamation-lawsuit-new-york-times-too-long-2025-9
