Wins for Trump, Cristina Cuomo
State Court of Appeals issues rulings on unrelated cases that have gone on for years
ALBANY — Former President Donald Trump and the wife of EX-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo were each handed wins Tuesday by New York’s highest court in a pair of unrelated lawsuits they’ve been battling for the last few years.
Trump and Cristina Cuomo won’t have to continue the litigation after the state Court of Appeals decided Tuesday it would not hear an appeal in either of the cases.
Both cases are examples of how those in the limelight aren’t immune from the state’s court system.
The case involving Trump was filed four years ago by his niece, Mary Trump, who had published a book about her family and its finances.
She filed the lawsuit against her uncle and his siblings over a collection of assets she had inherited from Fred Trump, the former president’s father. He died in 1999.
The lawsuit claimed that the Trump siblings had coerced her into relinquishing those assets by deflating their value.
“(They) misrepresented the expenses and costs associated with Mary’s interests, the net income they generated, as well as their underlying value,” the lawsuit said.
Those assets were actually worth “tens of millions of dollars more” than what she was told, the lawsuit claimed. She also claimed the Trump siblings had used business tactics to siphon money from her assets before she inherited them.
At first, Mary Trump had chosen to challenge the will of her grandfather at the time,
but later stood down after, according to her, she was pressured into letting go of the assets.
That came in the form of a settlement she signed in 2001 that, importantly, included a section that claimed to absolve
the former president and his siblings of any legal recourse.
But what Mary Trump didn’t know at the time, she claimed, was that her assets were allegedly worth more than she was told, and that she
may have made more money if she had held on to them.
“All told, they fleeced her of tens of millions of dollars or more,” her lawsuit said.
The judge who heard the case in Manhattan did not agree, writing in a decision two years later that the settlement she had agreed to was binding and couldn’t be challenged without proof she was a victim of fraud.
“(Mary Trump) released (the Trump siblings) from unknown fraud claims when she signed the releases,” wrote state Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed.
Her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, appealed that decision with the Appellate Division, First Department in Manhattan.
“(Reed) applies the correct standard in reviewing the validity and scope of the general releases at issue,” the appellate court’s decision said.
Mary Trump and Kaplan then appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals, the last stop for litigation in state court.
They lost that fight Tuesday after the Court of Appeals denied their motion for leave to appeal. That means the high court won’t hear the case and the mid-level appellate court’s ruling stands.
Chris Cuomo’s wife escapes high court arguments
The case involving Cristina
Cuomo stemmed from an incident between a bicyclist and her husband, Chris Cuomo — the brother of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — who was fired from CNN for advising the then-governor on how to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chris Cuomo caught the illness and quarantined at his home on Long Island.
Cristina Cuomo has said that, at the end of his quarantine period, they were outside with their family when they noticed a bicyclist stopped on the road alongside their house.
That cyclist’s name was David Whelan, who has claimed Cuomo berated him after he told the ex-anchor he should still be in quarantine.
Cuomo then briefly mentioned the incident on his podcast and the ordeal appeared to be behind them.
Cristina Cuomo went on to speak about the interaction in two interviews — one on television and one for a magazine.
During those interviews, she said the bicyclist had “a reputation for causing trouble in the community” and called him a “creepy guy.”
She did not name Whelan, who ended up revealing his identity in interviews with media outlets.
Whelan filed a lawsuit against Cristina Cuomo about a year later, claiming
she had defamed him when she spoke about the incident in interviews. He sought damages from the Cuomos “in excess of $800,000.”
“(Cuomo’s) statements depict plaintiff as a deranged person who has nothing better to do than go around the community seeking to ‘start trouble,’” his lawsuit said.
But, like Mary Trump, a judge in Suffolk County rejected his argument and dismissed the case, partly because Cristina Cuomo had never named him.
“There are no allegations that she ever identified (Whalen),” wrote state Supreme Court Justice Joseph Santorelli. “The court notes that (Whalen) identified himself as the person that had the verbal altercation when he was interviewed.”
Whelan then took that case to the Appellate Division, Second Department, which agreed with Santorelli and also said Cuomo’s statements about him weren’t defamatory.
“The statements made by (Cuomo) during the April 2020 interview were not actionable,” the appellate court ruled.
That’s the end of the road for Whelan, who was also denied leave to appeal by the Court of Appeals on Tuesday.
“There was no merit to the claim in the first instance and all of the courts have seen fit to dismiss it,” said Karen Ondrovic, who represented Cuomo.