It’s ironic that Donald Trump, who’s spent nearly a year artfully dodging and delaying 91 criminal felony charges in four states, could be laid low by an entirely avoidable civil suit.

On Jan. 26, a federal jury in Manhattan awarded writer, journalist and columnist E. Jean Carroll an $83.3 million defamation verdict against Trump, $65 million of it comprised of punitive damages.

Trump had already lost a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation case to Carroll last May based on her claim that he had forcibly groped her in the lingerie dressing room of a New York City department store in 1996, then publicly lambasted her account of the incident on his Truth Social platform as a “Hoax and a lie.”

The first Carroll trial proved a minor embarrassment to Trump but hardly a disaster. The $5 million verdict was little more than a rounding error compared to his estimated $2.5 billion net worth. It barely made a dent in his reputation, since he’d already been heard boasting in a resurrected Access Hollywood interview during his 2016 presidential campaign, “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.”

Nonetheless, following the trial, Trump promptly posted on Truth Social that the case was a “witch hunt,” the verdict a “disgrace,” and that he had “absolutely no idea who this woman is.” This led to the second defamation suit. Trump’s diatribes against Carroll continued up to and through the second trial, including a notorious outburst at a CNN town hall during the presidential campaign.

Though even $83 million might seem a comparatively small sum for a billionaire, Trump’s fortune is mostly tied up in real estate — urban office towers, hotels and golf courses. Real estate can’t be liquidated as quickly or easily as stocks or bonds, and having to raise a lot of cash in a hurry could create serious financial problems for him.

It would be a bad time for Trump to sell any of his office towers, since there’s a soft market for such properties as a result of elevated vacancies. Due to high interest rates, it would also be an inopportune moment to refinance the loans his properties secure. Moreover, if Trump’s properties are cross-collateralized to secure multiple loans, the forced sale of one in a post-judgment collection action could trigger the liquidation of others.

Finally, about half of Trump’s real estate holdings are located in New York City, where Attorney General Letitia James has tied it up in civil litigation that could lead to the assessment of up to $370 million in penalties and dissolution of his New York companies in a decision expected to issue any day. Such a result would be what one legal scholar has dubbed “a death penalty for a business.” Not only could Trump be barred from operating in New York, his enterprises elsewhere would have difficulty borrowing money from banks.

During the early 1990s recession, Trump filed corporate bankruptcies, six in all, to extract himself from financial troubles when his holdings in Atlantic City casinos placed him at risk of losing his entire real estate empire to a cascade of loan defaults. His debt to Carroll, however, is a personal one which can’t be isolated to a single corporation, and the $65 million punitive damage portion is not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

So Carroll’s verdict could turn out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Trump’s criminal trials may meander on until he or another Republican candidate gets elected president and halts their prosecution or issues a pardon. But Trump free, yet shorn of his fortune, would be as pathetic a sight as Trump behind bars.

And, none of this ever needed to happen. If was, as sports writers say, an unforced error.

As any experienced trial lawyer can attest, defamation is a potentially explosive claim, since all jurors, rich or poor, can identify with the pain inflicted upon a plaintiff whose good name has been trashed. An injury to reputation can severely impact the victim’s employment, business, personal relationships, social standing and emotional health.

Once a defamatory statement has been let loose in the public domain, it can’t, like the proverbial genie, be put back in the bottle. However, its harm to the plaintiff’s reputation can be minimized so as to reduce the potential size of any monetary award against the defendant. Even the threat of a defamation suit typically calls forth prompt and decisive defensive measures to mitigate the consequences.

The first and most obvious measure is for the defendant to apologize for his offending comments by putting out a public retraction and apology and by refraining from repeating them. That’s one reason why reputable journalistic organizations routinely issue corrections for errors in their reporting. A second measure is to settle the case as quickly as possible, preferably before suit is even filed.

The worst thing a defendant can do is to keep repeating his defamatory remarks, allow the case to proceed to trial, and behave belligerently in front of the jury — in other words, all the things Trump did.

Trump, of course, has taken just this tack for most of his adult life, firing outrageous insults at anyone who criticizes, opposes, accuses, or even fails to praise him. It’s worked in politics, where he’s intimidated most elected office holders in the Republican Party into silence.

But the courtroom is not the political arena. It has enforceable rules, an impartial referee (the judge), and society’s greatest leveler (the jury). Blustering and blistering simply don’t work in court, and, when attempted, usually backfire. Trump apparently never got that memo, nor would he likely have paid attention to it if he had. And I don’t expect that he will in the future either.

If he keeps running his mouth, however, Carroll will likely file a third lawsuit, one that could result in a verdict which, to borrow Trump’s favorite hyperbole, will be “the biggest anyone’s ever seen.”

Elliott Epstein is a trial lawyer with Shukie & Segovias in Lewiston. His Rearview Mirror column, which has appeared in the Sun Journal for 17 years, analyzes current events in an historical context. He is also the author of “Lucifer’s Child,” a book about the notorious 1984 child murder of Angela Palmer. He may be contacted at epsteinel@yahoo.com

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