New York Appeals court throws out half billion fine in Trump fraud civil suit.

Oddly, the judges were not unanimous in this decision and left the fraud ruling in place.

Correction from the original - There still is a higher appellate court to appeal to.

(Original) - As far as I understand, the New York Appeals Court is the highest court in New York. So if James wants to appeal this case, she would need to go to the Federal Court system, which seems unlikely based on the type of lawsuit and the current ruling.

The court somehow still wants to suggest that Trump committed loan fraud by because the bank's appraisal of his Mar-a-Lago property was higher than the amount that he pays taxes on in Florida. To be clear, none of the decision making in the loan had anything to do with any values Trump might have suggested on the initial application. Likewise, the State of Florida is not providing any tax-break on Mar-a-Lago because Trump says so, but because the State recognizes Mar-a-Lago as resort property that is taxed differently. Trump had absolutely nothing to do with either the appraisals that the banks used or the taxes he paid.

The court has been sitting on this for a while, and perhaps did not want to provide a ruling that bolstered Trump. But the alternative was to rule against Trump and allow their decision to eventually be pushed into the Federal Court system where a similar reversal would have been slam dunk on the same grounds (8th amendment). The problem is that the Federal courts may have found the entire process was unconstitutional as well, meaning these sorts of civil suits (where no harm was done to anyone) could have been ended by the Federal courts. They probably wanted to give Trump enough of a win that he didn't feel obligated to fight it any further, while still saving some face by demanding he is guilty.

Not sure if this means that this is being remanded back for a more reasonable fine or if they are just trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug at this point. Most everyone is waiting for more information.

Update: The ruling in question is even more convoluted than originally thought and the math doesn't work out. Two of the five judges agreed with the original judge on the ruling of fraud (but not the fine), while two believed Trump needs a new trial because the trial judge ruled him guilty before holding the trial (makes sense). The fifth believed that the whole case should have been dismissed. How the ruling of the two judges apparently is the actual ruling seems to make little sense. It would appear that at least three of the five found serious errors in the case, so not sure how the fraud ruling stands.