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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26940 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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It seems — solely from the comments here — like the judge is making a factual conclusion about the value of MAL and therefore saying Trump didn’t account for the land use restrictions and is fraudulent

He's not. He does cite the county assessor's valuation, probably foolishly, but the argument is not "The valuation is above the county assessor's valuation, therefore the land use restrictions were not accounted for, therefore fraud". The argument is "we have Trumps's SFC statements, they don't disclose the land use restrictions, therefore fraud".

Defendants further imply that they may ignore the plain language of the 2002 Deed restrictions because they would likely be able to use the Florida judicial system to get out of their contractual requirements ; they further assert that because they may successfully breach their contract in the future, they were not required to consider the restrictions of the 2002 Deed when valuing the property NYSCEF Doc . 1292 at 48-51 . This argument is wholly without merit. At the time in which the defendants submitted the SFCs, the restrictions were in effect, and any valuations represented to third-parties must have incorporated those restrictions; failure to do so is fraud. Assets values that disregard applicable legal restrictions are by definition materially false and misleading

One I’m not sure there is a duty to disclose a publicly knowable fact. Second, was there an assessment report provided by Trump that stated the value or did Trump merely write a value? it isn’t clear from what you said but it sounds like the latter which means the judge is saying he doesn’t think the value was right because he doesn’t think it properly corrects for land use.

Second, was there an assessment report provided by Trump that stated the value or did Trump merely write a value?

I think he did both. I'm not familiar with exactly how it all works, but perusing the court documents, it seems that he provided a written report describing the properties as well as a spreadsheet breaking down their value.

In this spreadsheet for example he calculates Mar-a-Lago as being worth $531 million in 2012, based on the average price acre of two nearby properties ($25 million), multiplying that by Mar-a-Lago's acreage, and then adding a 30% premium for "completed facility and greater buildout".

So he's explicitly basing its valuation on the price of nearby properties that are not encumbered by the same land use restrictions and making no acknowledgement of or adjustment for those restrictions.

One I’m not sure there is a duty to disclose a publicly knowable fact

In general, no. Certainly Trump had no duty to seek a loan on favourable terms.

However, given that he elected to seek a loan, and that he provided financial information as a part of that loan application, I do think he had a duty to ensure that the information he provided was not knowingly misleading.

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