This past week, our Effervescent God of the Heavens Donald Trump sued The New York Times for $15 billion for committing the indelible crime of being mean to him. Bad New York Times! As Ned Beatty once said, you have messed with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone!

That was Wednesday. On Friday, in possibly one of the fastest legal dismissals since some ancient Greek chiseled the Dreros inscription into a bunch of rocks, a federal judge sua sponte booted the case. (Sua sponte is Latin legalese that means “get that weak shit outta here.”) This, as we understand it based on the reactions of a dozen lawyers or so we follow on Bluesky, is incredibly rare. Especially when a judge does it a mere 48 hours after the plea is filed.

The judge justified the dismissal on Rule 8 grounds. This is the rule in federal procedures that says legal pleadings such as this one must have “a short and plain statement of the claim showing the pleader is entitled to relief.” Apparently, it is very rare for a pleading to get rejected for Rule 8 violations, because most lawyers filing in federal courts are not galactic morons who do not understand the assignment.

In dismissing the case, the judge chastised Trump and his lawyers for wasting the court’s time and energy by filing an 85-page pleading that read more like a press release with its pages upon pages upon pages of bragging about Trump’s incredible achievements.

. . .

The judge had to slog through all this crap one turgid, overwritten, overblown turn of phrase after another. He was not happy about it. So not happy that this is how his response begins:

As every member of the bar of every federal court knows (or is presumed to know),

Again, we’re not lawyers, but we’ve read enough legal filings to know that if the judge is beginning a document like he’s talking to a grade schooler who left class for the bathroom without permission or a hall pass, he’s about to eviscerate you. Metaphorically, of course.

Even assuming that each allegation in the complaint is true ... a complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim for relief.

Tedious, burdensome, tendentious ... if someone is describing your writing this way, we recommend changing careers or letting AI write your legal briefs from now on.

. . .