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Or, for instance, when someone writes a long comment purporting to be about the US legal system, but is really just a vehicle to take a shot at Trump.
It's less about general criticism, and more that this is ymeskhout's specific hobby horse that has been flayed for years at this point, and regularly comes with standards called for against Trump that were not followed or applied (in general or by ymeskhout personally) on the lawfare against Trump. As with other pet topics, it repeats old themes to the point of evaporative cooling, which then leverage's ymeskhout's bad habit of dismissing/forgetting/claiming prior engagements on points either didn't occur or have been dismissed, for lack of an engaged opposition to engage otherwise.
As far as Trump-related lawfare goes, ymeskhout's a partisan and an old one at this point. At this point I only pay attention when he starts being petty towards people calling him out, like how this time he edited-in a callout- against The_Nybbler and then edited it out after being called out for it.
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.)
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?
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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