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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26480 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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So claiming his Trump Tower apartment was 3 times bigger than it is was just random speculation?

To me, that is the fraud and not the estimates. The issue is since the judge went all crazy on the valuations I don’t know if the rest of the factual record is accurate and don’t really have the inclination to review the record. I’ll just wait for the appeals and see what happens.

The factual record in this example is accurate. The Judge accurately cited a real valuation by the Palm County assessor.

You may think that the judge is playing rhetorical games to exaggerate their case, but that's a rhetorical issue. The Judge did not representing matters of fact in any way in this example, so there's no reason this should make you doubt other matters of fact cited throughout the ruling.

But that’s the whole thing — a validation by an assessor isn’t a fmv assessment. It would be akin to the judge stating the value of the company is based off of net equity in a balance sheet.

If that were the only factor in her judgement on the matter, yes.

But it's one sentence out of several paragraphs of the ruling on that matter, which is itself just a summary/reference to many many more pages of evidence, filings, and proceedings.

Where’d the judge go crazy?

He’s citing appraisals from a variety of firms, retained by everyone from Trump to the banks. Then he concludes, yeah, Trump’s guys had these appraisals when they made statements to the contrary. I don’t think he made up any numbers himself.

The existence of these appraisals is factual. Their contents are public record; I don’t think the plaintiff was lying about them. Are you arguing that, if the appraisals were so unrealistically low, lying about their contents was legally correct?

Citing a tax assessors valuation is going crazy because tax assessors aren’t really based on FMV

If you’re throwing out those…what do you think the appeal is supposed to turn up?

This ground has been trod. Exhaustively, judging by the specific sanctions applied to defendant’s counsel. The judge found it unconvincing, perhaps because several of the appraisals were not tax assessments. At least one specifically calls out FMV.

I can’t help but feel like an appeal could confirm all the same things, address your complaint specifically, and you’d turn around and mine for another factoid that favors Trump.

You can feel that way. Kind of a weird thing to say given that I’ve noted there does seem to be potential fraud here (and have said I believe he is guilty on the documents case). But yeah I’m just a mindless Trump fan boy.

Real estate square footages are so often exaggerated

I’ve noticed that rental units from a professional complex always seem small compared to an identical unit rented by an owner in a condo building.

There are some reasons how sq footage can be counted different. You can measure every room and get a number (excludes the carpentry work) or just measure what it would be as raw space. Commercial has even more leeway on counting space (outside hallways to offices I believe can be counted differently).

Care to elaborate?

I did see Beckman v Wells Fargo, where the broker advertised twice as much lakefront as the property really had. They ended up protected from liability because they relied on county and bank records.

If you can show me where a suit was dismissed for the broker claiming square footage was “subjective,” as the Trump team attempted, I’d love to see it.

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