Left: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani arrives to address reporters outside the Merrimack County Superior Court, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa). Right: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker, testifies as her mother Ruby Freeman listens at right, during a hearing before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, June 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ruled that a $148 million judgment ordered against Rudy Giuliani after he defamed election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss will be upheld.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell issued the 48-page memorandum opinion on Monday, writing that the former New York City mayor and Donald Trump‘s co-defendant in the sprawling racketeering case in Georgia offered “threadbare” and unsupported legal arguments in his attempt to unwind the staggering judgment. Howell has excoriated Giuliani in the past, writing in December when she ordered him to pay Freeman and Moss promptly that he had been an “unwilling and uncooperative” litigant. Giuliani called the judgment the equivalent to the “civil death penalty” after he loss the case last year. He promptly filed for bankruptcy and is in the throes of those proceedings now.
“Giuliani’s renewed motion urging this Court to reverse its prior findings and rulings to override the jury’s considered verdict on the basis of five threadbare arguments falls well short of persuading that ‘the evidence and all reasonable inferences that can be drawn therefrom are so one-sided that reasonable men and women could not have reached a verdict in [plaintiff’s] favor,”” Howell wrote. “The jury’s verdict awarding plaintiff’s compensatory and punitive damages for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress caused by Giuliani and his co-conspirators, as reflected in final judgment, is the amount of $145,969,000 plus post-judgment interest [citation omitted].”
Freeman and Shaye have been unable to collect on their judgment since mid-December when three days after a jury delivered a unanimous verdict, Giuliani declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In succession, Giuliani went on to file briefs with the court arguing that Freeman and Moss could not prove they had been damaged, that they statements they said caused them emotional distress were made a year before the lawsuit was filed, and that there was a lack of expert testimony at his trial “as to how much of their emotional harm was caused by Giuliani as opposed to other sources that pre-dated Giuliani’s alleged conduct,” Giuliani’s motion states.
Giuliani also claimed the judgment should be nixed because two expert witnesses for the plaintiffs should have had their testimony stricken.
“These arguments are foreclosed by the law of the case doctrine based on this court’s default judgment imposing liability on Giuliani for plaintiffs’ claims as a discovery sanction — and Giuliani provides no basis to exempt him from application of that doctrine here — and otherwise fail on the merits,” Howell wrote.
The former mayor had ample opportunity to comply with discovery requests, the Barack Obama-appointed judge noted in her opinion, but he had time and again failed to comply in a timely fashion. As Law&Crime previously reported, Giuliani’s history flouting discovery in that case is being used against him now in bankruptcy court as creditors sort out his assets.
Giuliani was expected to be deposed in bankruptcy court on Monday as Law&Crime previously reported.
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