Carroll defamation trial against Trump postponed despite denial to combine lawsuits

A judge declined to consolidate two of E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuits against former President Donald Trump but allowed the indefinite postponement of her initial lawsuit against him.

Last week, Trump and Carroll agreed to combine the two defamation lawsuits she filed against him. Carroll, a former magazine columnist, accused him of raping her in the 1990s and later sued after he claimed she lied about the allegations.

But Judge Lewis A. Kaplan wrote Monday in his motion to deny consolidating the cases that the parties “overestimate both the judicial economy benefits that would be achieved and the risk of inconsistent rulings that would be eliminated by consolidation.”

Kaplan also said approval of the consolidation would be “in tension” with appeals court precedent on the matter. However, he noted that an April 10 trial over Carroll’s initial defamation lawsuit “could prove unnecessary” and moved to delay that trial indefinitely.

Trump and Carroll’s agreement on Friday was a move to conjoin two lawsuits in the yearslong legal battle brought by Carroll, who sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he denied claims he had raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Carroll filed the suit after Trump repeatedly denied the allegations, describing her as “not my type.”

She filed a second lawsuit in October after Trump wrote in a social media post that the allegations were a “hoax and a lie.”

In her second suit, Carroll is suing Trump for battery after New York passed a law opening the window for sexual assault victims to sue their alleged offenders even after the statute of limitations had expired. The trial for that case is slated to begin on April 25.

Trump has vehemently denied raping Carroll, who has accused him of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store after an alleged encounter in the mid-1990s. Trump has also pushed back on accusations of defamation, arguing his denial was a fair response to her claims.

Earlier this month, Kaplan allowed the infamous Access Hollywood tape to be played at the defamation trial, in which Trump made claims on a hot mic about how being wealthy and famous allows men to grope women. The judge also permitted the testimony of two other women who alleged Trump committed sexual crimes against them.

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