Attorney for plaintiff E. Jean Carroll in her defamation case against former President Donald Trump, Roberta Kaplan gets an opportunity to lay out her impressive legal bona fides in response to a post-verdict accusation by Trump attorney Alina Habba. Habba, having lost the jury verdict, accused Ms. Kaplan of having an undisclosed mentee/mentor relationship with the presiding judge in the case, Lewis A. Kaplan (no relation), an allegation attorney Kaplan disputes vigorously.
Attorney Kaplan’s response, detailing her career and how it did and did not dovetail with that of the judge, affords Ms. Kaplan a chance to boast a bit — even if that’s not her intention — about a meteoric legal career that saw her attend one of the nation’s top law schools (at Columbia University), clerk for an important judge, and then land a junior associate job at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. (Kaplan doesn’t even get to mention her undergrad degree from Harvard.)
Judge Kaplan was a senior litigator when Attorney Kaplan arrived at Paul Weiss, she attests, and they did no legal work together while at the firm, which he left to become a judge less than two years after she began working there.
Habba — in charges that Texas law professor Lee Kovarsky says come “very close” to Rule 11 “sanctions based on frivolous filings” — alleges that because the two Kaplans shared a workplace three decades ago for less than two years, the relationship constitutes a conflict of interest in the case.
FWIW I think the bar for Rule 11 sanctions based on frivolous filings should be really high, but Habba's filing comes very close. I also think it would be a mistake for her to press for it or the Judge to grant it. https://t.co/kJtJH9MSRb
— Lee Kovarsky (@lee_kovarsky) January 30, 2024
“Needless to say,” attorney Kaplan writes to the judge in her response, after describing her career in detail, “at no point have we ever had a ‘mentor’ type relationship.” Kaplan writes that she has “no recollection from that time period of ever interacting with Your Honor” and adds “In fact, I remember no direct interaction from that time period with Your Honor at all.”
Attorney Kaplan asserts that the Habba accusation fits with the overall modus operandi of Trump’s defense, which emphasizes an appeal to those who doubt the veracity and fairness of the justice system.
She writes: “From the very start of the recently concluded trial, Donald Trump and Ms. Habba have pushed a false narrative of judicial bias so that they could characterize any jury verdict against Trump as the product of a corrupt system.”
