Dear listeners,
It’s been a big week for some of the dumber litigation we follow around here. It’s not all dumb — we start with an update on California’s litigation over the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, where the state has gotten relief at the trial court level but faces a tough road in the appeals courts. And we look at a case in Boston where a federal judge has blocked, for now, the cancellation of certain grants the National Institutes of Health have deemed excessively DEI-related.
But we also have updates on Mike Lindell, who says the $2.3 million defamation judgment against him is actually a victory; Michael Avenatti, who appealed his sentence and got it reduced very slightly (rare win!); and various Proud Boys, who made the mistake of hiring a felon to be their lawyer.
We also look at some weird drama at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where Judge Stephen Menashi is really annoyed his colleagues didn’t want to reopen the E. Jean Carroll litigation. And we look at juror drama at the P. Diddy trial. A juror was removed — because he apparently mentioned to some court staff that he doesn’t live in New York — and Diddy’s defense team is crying foul because he was just one of two black men on the jury.
And — most excitingly — I get to make Ken talk about the Real Housewives, thanks to listener “LawZag,” who flagged for us an order that came down in March. Simon Guobadia has sued his estranged wife, Real Housewife of Atlanta Porsha Williams, saying she defamed him by making a series of Instagram posts that implied he has erectile dysfunction. Williams says the posts didn’t even mention Guobadia — they just spoke generally about how erectile dysfunction is a problem — but Guobadia’s lawsuit survived a motion to dismiss because he is in a strong position to argue defamation by implication: that a reasonable reader might understand Williams’s posts to have been of and concerning Guobadia. (Indeed, Guobadia says, whenever he posts about anything on social media, he now gets commenters ribbing him about his purported penile problems.) That sounds unpleasant — but as Ken notes, Guobadia’s real challenge in court (besides proving that he doesn’t have E.D.) will be showing serious damages, especially since his penile prowess isn’t directly related to his work. By the way, Guobadia has recently been deported to Nigeria, which unfortunately might deprive us of the opportunity to cover this litigation through trial.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
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