KEY POINTS
- The judge says Ms Carroll can proceed with lawsuits alleging she was raped by Mr Trump in a department store a quarter century ago.
- It’s because Mr Trump’s challenges were without merit.
- He was upholding a temporary New York state law letting adult victims of sexual abuse sue their abusers.
This article contains references to rape and sexual assault.
A US judge on Friday rejected as “absurd” former President Donald Trump’s effort to dismiss writer E Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing him of defamation and battery after he denied raping her in the mid-1990s.
Judge Lewis A Kaplan said Ms Carroll could proceed with lawsuits alleging she was raped by Mr Trump in a department store a quarter century ago because Mr Trump’s challenges were without merit, upholding a temporary New York state law letting adult victims of sexual abuse sue their abusers.
“The fact that Mr Trump denies Ms Carroll’s allegations does not enter into the analysis at this stage of the case,” the Manhattan jurist wrote.
“What, if anything, actually occurred must await further proceedings if the complaint withstands the present motion.”
Alina Habba, a lawyer for Mr Trump, said in a statement: “While we are disappointed with the court’s decision, we intend to immediately appeal the order and continue to advocate for our client’s constitutionally protected rights.”
In the ruling, Mr Kaplan said the Adult Survivor’s Act was similar to the Child Victims Act, another New York state law that temporarily allowed victims of sexual assaults when they were children to sue their abusers years later.
“Mr Trump has not offered any meritorious reason to reject the one-year revival period in the ASA as unreasonable when the nearly identical two-year revival period in the Child Victims Act has been accepted as reasonable by all courts to consider it,” Mr Kaplan wrote.
“To suggest that the ASA violates the state due process clause because the legislature supposedly did not describe that injustice to the defendant’s entire satisfaction in a particular paragraph of a particular type of legislative document – itself a dubious premise – is absurd,” Judge Kaplan wrote.
Lawyers for the former president had asked the judge to toss out the lawsuit after Mr Trump said the encounter at an upscale Manhattan department store never happened.
Mr Trump said Ms Carroll made a claim publicly for the first time in a 2019 book to generate book sales.
Ms Carroll was a longtime Elle magazine columnist.
She initially sued Mr Trump for defamation after he mocked her claims that he sexually assaulted her in late 1995 or early 1996 after they had a chance meeting in the department store, and she agreed to help him pick out lingerie for a friend.
She sued Mr Trump with the rape claim in November when the Adult Survivor’s Act took effect.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit . In an emergency, call 000.
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