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You're not wrong, but if we modded everyone who flays dead horses, we'd have a lot fewer regulars.
(I like his posts because he explains law stuff in a lawyerly way, even if he is a bit cute sometimes when specifically criticizing Trump. But his theory that Trump is engaging in lawfare as a fundraising project does not seem unreasonable to me.)
The collapse button is helpful in this case.
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I'm not precisely sure what drives 'if we modded this' comes from, because to the best of my knowledge neither myself or the Nybbler have called for mod-hat moderation of it. I cannot speak for @The_Nybbler, but I know I did not report the post.
It's certainly an argument... but it also runs into the general point of 'and this is not new or unique to Trump,' which comes back, as many things do, to whether Trump is uniquely bad, or if Trump is getting unique censure for things that go on as a matter of course. Lawfare and fundraising is an incredibly well established practice in a diversity of forms, from non-governmental agencies like the ACLU running literal solicitation campaigns to continue legal activity broadly seen as ideologically partisan now adays to government-entangled ones such as the Obama-era practice of offering corporate settlement offers that resulted in corporations giving money to non-profits or interest groups aligned with the party of government that was taking the corporations to court. There is an entire spectrum, and entire genres of fundraising solicitation emails of '[important thing] is at court- we need YOUR money NOW!'
Which, of course, brings back to the point of distinction of when someone is accused of pretext. 'I know it when I see it' is not a credible standard when highly subjective, and 'this is a Serious Thing' is not a credible claim when contextual examples of lawfare are available that were not held to similar standards. Selective appeals or enforcement of standards are related to the concept of anarcho-tyrrany precisely because the choice to enforce them is generally pretextual. When a general category of action is widespread, the choice to enforce sanction can simultaneously be 'valid' (there is a broken rule) and pretextual (the broken rule is not the reason the sanction is being enforced).
Okay, cool, so is your complaint that he's attacking Trump in an unprincipled fashion, or that he took a poke at nybbler in the process? Because I have some sympathy for the latter complaint (and believe me, it's hard for me to muster any sympathy where nybbler is concerned), but for the former, I have none, because whether or not I agree with your criticisms, this is exactly the kind of argument that is the Motte's bread and butter.
Solely Nybbler and the edit-trolling, and I have made no request or advocacy for mod action against even that.
As mentioned in a different post, I try to no longer engage ymeshkout on top-level post topics due to my judgement of him as a bad-faith actor in iterative engagements. I don't use block lists as a general principle, so the primary instances I respond are when he [insert potentially imprecise but generally negative action] other posters.
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Really though the first three meaty paragraphs are wholly unnecessary to the post. I don’t think that should be subject to moderation but should be discouraged. Part of “speaking plainly” is getting to the point.
I do often wonder if I am overexplaining things. Because of my job, I don't think I am well calibrated on how much non-lawyers need/want something explained. I'm a nerd about minutiae like the history of civil procedure and personally find the subject interesting so when I started writing about a "bad" lawsuit, it seemed relevant to include some background on what makes a "good" lawsuit. The point, one which I probably should've been clearer about, is that we used to have this very formal and stodgy standards for how lawsuits are worded but that changed in favor of something less formal. The intent was to encourage people to speak more plainly, and I showcased the Dioguardi case to highlight how low the bar was. The risk with less formal standards is that people might ramble on, and so I thought it was relevant that courts want you to get to the point when you file a lawsuit.
All those things combined (less formality, preference for short and plain statements) showcase the challenge judges have with strictly policing the gratuitous parting shots lawyers/clients include in their lawsuits. So towards that end I highlighted Armstrong's example as a rare case of a lawsuit being dismissed for being too long, as a way to illustrate the limits of what judges are willing to put up with. The point was to set the stage for how Trump's 193-page lawsuit should be evaluated. I think if I just linked you a 200 page PDF and said "this is bad", few people would understand why.
With all that said, do you still think the intro was totally unnecessary?
I think your post is very good. It flowed well and the order of presentation made sense to me (setting the legal context up first--it could have been shorter but I greatly appreciated the history lesson; it's funny how much understanding you can get from finding out that things used to be done very differently, or are done differently in other places).
FWIW I'm not sure that asking everyone for more explicit feedback is worthwhile. I think there are multiple comments in this thread that are really desperately scrounging for a criticism and aren't engaging in good faith. Asking them what they want is pointless, because what they really want is for their opponents to go away, but they can't really say that.
Thanks, I still think asking for feedback is worthwhile because it gives people the opportunity to rebut the conclusion that they're only upset because I criticized something they like. If they refuse to do so, that's on them. If they provide helpful feedback, then it's a win for both of us.
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Yes. Because it wasn’t really about pleading. The issue at hand is lawfare. That is, the rules relating to pleading don’t really implicate why Trump lost and lost “bigly.” The second part is interesting on its own which is you (and seemingly the court) think Trump is using the court for extralegal reasons. But hey, thanks for the free content (I don’t mean that sarcastically — my comments are just my two cents).
On the other hand, I haven’t done Civ Pro since my 1L year (in a transactional practice) so perhaps not the target audience.
We might ultimately disagree on this point but I still would be interested in any thoughts you might have. How the pleading was structured seems core to my argument that it was a pretextual lawsuit from the start. I can't read Trump or Habba's mind, but I can look at the pleading and immediately notice some red flags which are inconsistent with "good faith lawsuit".
From your post:
For a full accounting as to why you can read the 65-page opinion but the short summary is the lawsuit was a confusing constellation of disconnected political grievances Trump had smooshed together into a laundry list of allegations that could not conceivably be supported by any existing law. For example, Trump's lawyer Alina Habba alleged malicious prosecution without a prosecution, alleged RICO violations without predicate offenses, alleged obstruction of justice without a judicial proceeding, cited directly to reports that contradicted their claims, and on and on.
That is all about the merits of Trump’s case. You also point out bullshit responses to bullshit claims. That is, the case was frivolous not because of the length of the pleadings but because of the shitty content of what was plead.
The history of pleadings is entirely separate from the point you are getting at.
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Usually discouragement comes in the form of downvotes and feedback, which he's getting plenty of. Generally I don't think it's the mods' role to discourage prolixity.
Agreed — shouldn’t be a moderation point.
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