- Donald Trump will be fined $10K a day until he complies with a demand for documents by the NY AG.
- NJ lawyer Eugene Banta is shocked his old case, Jackson v. NYC, is the precedent for Trump’s fine.
- “It’s just amazing to me,” he told Insider of the 35-year-old case he won just out of law school.
It was 3o years ago, and the ink was barely dry on his law degree when Eugene M. Banta argued his first-ever appellate case under the coffered wood ceilings of a Manhattan courtroom.
“I was happier than a pig in mud,” he recalled of winning.
But Banta could never have imagined that his win in a minor personal-injury case would set an important precedent that would end up ensnaring a former president.
Donald Trump is being fined $10,000 a day for failing to comply with New York Attorney General Letitia James’ demand that he turn over business documents. The fine reached $110,000 on Friday, and will keep accruing until Trump signs what’s called a “Jackson affidavit,” a sworn, detailed description of his failed search for the documents James wants.
That’s Jackson, as in Banta’s old personal-injury case, Jackson v. the City of New York.
“All I could think of was the butterfly effect — something completely random,” Banta told Insider Friday, after learning of his inadvertent role in Trump’s spiraling fine.
“Having an impact 30-something years later is just amazing to me,” added Banta, 66, now a commercial collections attorney with Heitner & Breitstein in Marlboro, NJ.
https://news.yahoo.com/jersey-lawyer-amazed-35-old-224242637.html
