E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump and United States of America (poll added!)

[Sam the Centipede]

I think one of the IKEA heirs got a speeding ticket that cost about what I make in a year in Norway (strange because IKEA is Dutch but here you are...) and I know a case in Sweden where a traffic ticket cost a guy more than he paid for the Shelby GT 500 he got it in.

Ingvar Kamprad var svenskar, från Småland. IKEA är svenskt. Tack!

[somerset]

I think one of the IKEA heirs got a speeding ticket that cost about what I make in a year in Norway (strange because IKEA is Dutch but here you are...) and I know a case in Sweden where a traffic ticket cost a guy more than he paid for the Shelby GT 500 he got it in.

Ingvar Kamprad var svenskar, från Småland. IKEA är svenskt. Tack!

https://www.britannica.com/topic/IKEA

IKEA, home furnishings retailer that was the world’s largest seller of furniture in the early 21st century, operating more than 300 stores around the world. IKEA specializes in low-priced goods, sold whenever possible in compact “flat-pack” form for in-home assembly by the customer. IKEA was founded (1943) in Sweden and still flaunts its origins—store exteriors are decorated in the colours of the Swedish flag (blue and yellow), in-store restaurants serve Swedish food, and the company’s products carry Swedish names—but its headquarters are now in the Netherlands.

[Gregg]

I think one of the IKEA heirs got a speeding ticket that cost about what I make in a year in Norway (strange because IKEA is Dutch but here you are...) and I know a case in Sweden where a traffic ticket cost a guy more than he paid for the Shelby GT 500 he got it in.

Ingvar Kamprad var svenskar, från Småland. IKEA är svenskt. Tack!

https://www.britannica.com/topic/IKEA

IKEA, home furnishings retailer that was the world’s largest seller of furniture in the early 21st century, operating more than 300 stores around the world. IKEA specializes in low-priced goods, sold whenever possible in compact “flat-pack” form for in-home assembly by the customer. IKEA was founded (1943) in Sweden and still flaunts its origins—store exteriors are decorated in the colours of the Swedish flag (blue and yellow), in-store restaurants serve Swedish food, and the company’s products carry Swedish names—but its headquarters are now in the Netherlands.

Well don't I look stupid. I have no idea where I got the idea that they were a Dutch company because, DUH, Swedish meatballs anyone? Sometimes I think I'm pretty smart, and sometimes, well, I know I'm pretty dumb.

[Gregg]

But wait, there's more, I was colossally wrong but it wasn't my fault...

Inter IKEA Systems B.V., doing business as IKEA, is a Swedish multinational conglomerate based in the Netherlands that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, kitchen appliances, decoration, home accessories, and various other goods and home services. Started in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad and currently headquartered in the Netherlands, IKEA has been the world's largest furniture retailer since 2008

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

The old bait and switch!!!! Well played, IKEA!

[Gregg]

The old bait and switch!!!! Well played, IKEA!

It's a pretty complicated tax move, where the company is owned by several Foundations, which separate the retail stores, manufacturing, intellectual property, franchise operations, and.... you get the idea. Make it wicked complicated, call it a charity, appoint the family to all the board positions to maintain control and quit paying taxes. Ain't capitalism grand? Here's the Wiki where I found my answers...

Ikea, the company is as complicated as the bookshelves

[RTH10260]

I guess the Swedish tax collectors got too ambitious for the IKEA folks, so they looked for those greener pastures.

[Gregg]

I guess the Swedish tax collectors got too ambitious for the IKEA folks, so they looked for those greener pastures.

It looks like a "Patagonia" tax move, where they transfer almost all the company to a charity that they control through a captive board and thus pay virtually no taxes. They can take whatever cash they need out of the little piece of equity the retain as dividends that the board of the charity declares. The only taxes they end up paying are on those dividends, the company, being a charity pays none.

Its ingenious and evil at the same time. Companies should not be able to just opt out of paying taxes, the enjoy too many benefits to not pay anything for them. Patagonia did something similar recently and bragged about how "I gave the whole thing to charity" but didn't explain how his family controlled the board of the charity which could declare the dividends.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Can charities issue dividends?

[somerset]

I guess the Swedish tax collectors got too ambitious for the IKEA folks, so they looked for those greener pastures.

It looks like a "Patagonia" tax move, where they transfer almost all the company to a charity that they control through a captive board and thus pay virtually no taxes. They can take whatever cash they need out of the little piece of equity the retain as dividends that the board of the charity declares. The only taxes they end up paying are on those dividends, the company, being a charity pays none.

Its ingenious and evil at the same time. Companies should not be able to just opt out of paying taxes, the enjoy too many benefits to not pay anything for them. Patagonia did something similar recently and bragged about how "I gave the whole thing to charity" but didn't explain how his family controlled the board of the charity which could declare the dividends.

See, "Howard Hughes Medical Institute."

[Gregg]

Can charities issue dividends?

A charity that owns most of a for profit corporation's shares can vote the shares to authorize a dividend payout. The owners tiny equity share is typically a "B Class" share that is the only class that gets a dividend or the A shares get one but since the foundation owns them it amounts to reinvesting. Doing all this restricts their actual ownership of stupid wealth while providing access to the potential income from said wealth as the need it. If you ever need to buy a private island, authorize a dividend to cover it, you will pay capital gains on that payout, but that's the only tax you pay. I'm guessing here the Netherlands has favorable Capital Gains tax or allows the kind of structure I'm describing which the USA would but the UK wouldn't.

If I ever win the billion dollar Powerball I plan on doing it myself.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Thank you, Gregg!!!!

[RTH10260]

An appeals court will consider Trump’s presidential immunity claim in sex abuse case

BY LARRY NEUMEISTER
Updated 12:49 AM CEST, September 14, 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court will quickly consider former President Donald Trump’s claim that presidential immunity protects him from being held liable for statements he made in 2019 when he denied that he sexually attacked a New York writer in the 1990s, the court said Wednesday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued an order to say it will expedite the appeal a day after Trump attorney Alina Habba told a three-judge panel of the court that the appeal raised “an important question that will affect the delicate balance between the judiciary and the executive branch for many years to come.”

The 2nd Circuit set a schedule for written arguments to be filed within a month.

[raison de arizona]

"When you're the president, they let you do whatever you want."

It's good to be the King.

[Suranis]

Joe Biden should issue a statement saying that Trump has a tiny, Tiny Penis, tiny fingers, is bald as an egg and is 330 pounds. And see how Trump reacts.

[RTH10260]

Appeals court denies Trump's attempt to stay E. Jean Carroll's 2019 lawsuit
The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial on Jan. 15.

ByAaron Katersky
September 13, 2023, 9:37 PM

A federal appeals court on Wednesday denied former President Donald Trump’s attempt to stay the 2019 defamation lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

The lawsuit by the former Elle magazine columnist is scheduled to go to trial on Jan. 15. It alleges that Trump defamed her in 2019 when he said she was "not my type" and accused her of having a political and financial motive when he denied her claim that he raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s.

A jury established in a related case that Trump was liable for defaming and battering Carroll.

Trump had sought to pause the 2019 case in order to give him time to invoke an immunity defense, his attorney argued in a hearing Tuesday.

The appeals court Wednesday ordered both sides to submit written briefs in the next 15 days to argue whether Trump should be able to invoke presidential immunity to shield himself from Carroll’s 2019 claim.

The district court judge faulted Trump for waiting more than three years to invoke presidential immunity, long after engaging with the case.




https://abcnews.go.com/US/appeals-court ... =103165320

[RTH10260]

comments by Michael Popok

eg. Alina Habba failure in this intermediate appeal , late raising the presidential immunity

► Show Spoiler

[Gregg]

Also, some of the comments he says are President job stuff were made after the mainstream media would have us believe he left office.

[raison de arizona]

No soup for you!

When you hire attorneys who only tell you what you want to hear, you end up getting your only expert witness suppressed by the Judge. Poor Donald Trump just lost his only expert in E. Jean Carroll II. Accountability is happening.

[RTH10260]

Judge tosses Trump's expert witness in E. Jean Carroll case

David Edwards
October 5, 2023 2:01PM ET

U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday rejected one of President Donald Trump's expert witnesses in a trial to determine damages after the former president was found liable for defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll.

Noting that the trial was set only to determine damages, Kaplan ruled that five of the six requests made by Carroll's attorneys were moot. Earlier this year, Trump was found liable for defaming Carroll while denying he raped her.

But the judge granted a request to preclude the testimony of Robert J. Fisher, a witness for the defense who intended to rebut expert witness Professor Ashlee Humphreys.

Kaplan's order pointed to another court ruling that found Fisher unreliable.

"Mr. Fisher does not explain how his experience informs his criticisms of [Professor] Humphreys's proposal for reputation repair," the prior ruling found. "Indeed, his entire analysis of [Professor] Humphreys's proposal for reputation repair contains no citation other than to [Professor] Humphreys's report."

In rejecting Fisher, Kaplan indicated he agreed with the ruling.




https://www.rawstory.com/e-jean-carroll-trump-witness/

[raison de arizona]

Somebunny is paying attention...

JUST IN: Fresh off the SBF trial, Judge Kaplan has ordered an anonymous jury for Trump's upcoming civil trial (re: E. Jean Carroll), citing Trump's attack on Judge Engoron's clerk. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap ... .222.0.pdf

[Rolodex]

https://abovethelaw.com/2023/11/trump-l ... ase-looms/

Gotta admire the sheer bravado that stupidity brings. From the Eastman School of Expert Witnesses, we have the Trump Edition. Snarkily written article linked but here's the TL;DR, long edition:

Two cases:
Carroll I
Carroll II

Carroll I is a defamation case E. Jean Carroll filed against Trump while he was still president. It will be tried 1/24. It took forever to get to court bc it had to be batted around awhile while they decided if defaming here was part of presidential duty (spoiler alert: it's not).

Carroll II - After he was out of office, he defamed her again, so def not part of official duties. Plus by then, NY had passed the sexual abuse survivor law. So those 2 things - rape and defamation - were combined into what's known as Carroll II. That went to court, Carroll won and was awarded $5 million (and trump found guilty of sexual abuse).

So, just a little upthread, you can see that an "expert" for Trump in Carroll II - a Mr. Fisher - was dismissed by the judge because he was so terrible he couldn't even qualify before he even got to court.

But, since this crack team of trump lawyers have no idea how to find actual experts (see: Eastman), they present this same idiot, Mr Fisher, as an expert on the same matters for the upcoming Carroll I. Judge had to be laughing as he said nope.

I wonder if this is the first time the same judge has dismissed the same "expert" for two different trials for the same reason and the same defendant (Kaplan was judge for Carroll II and will preside for Carroll I).

I feel like Mr Fisher is someone they found in a Facebook comments thread somewhere.

[MN-Skeptic]

Trump loses immunity bid in Carroll defamation suit, to seek Supreme Court review

Donald Trump cannot assert presidential immunity from a defamation lawsuit by writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday, dealing the former U.S. president another legal setback.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld a federal judge's decision to reject Trump's claim of immunity, finding Trump had waited too long to raise it as a defense.

Alina Habba, one of Trump's lawyers in the case, called the ruling "fundamentally flawed" and said Trump would seek "immediate review" from the Supreme Court.



In June, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan rejected Trump's bid to dismiss Carroll's case and later refused to let Trump raise an immunity defense, citing the delay in seeking to invoke it and the public interest in accountability.

The 2nd Circuit on Wednesday said those decisions were correct.

"A three-year-delay is more than enough, under our precedents, to qualify as 'undue,'" a three-judge panel wrote in its opinion.

Trump's appeal was heard on an expedited basis, ahead of a scheduled Jan. 16, 2024, trial.

A bit more at the link above.

[AndyinPA]

So, is he going to take it to the Supreme Court? He runs to the SCOTUS the way a kid runs to mommy.

And he got to choose his mommy.

[RTH10260]

Perhaps Jack Smith's application for a SCOTUS decision on presidential immunity will overtake the former guys appeal and the decision will apply for all future T cases, assuming that SCOTUS puts hands on this hot potatoe.