Did a Florida judge find that an individual "lied" about actions made by social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate? No, that's not true: The judge who made the decision did not rule yet on the question if the person actually defamed the Tate brothers. Rather, he denied a motion to dismiss defamation counts the brothers filed against the person, meaning the part of the lawsuit that deals with that question can move forward.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by Andrew Tate on X on July 22, 2024. The post read:
I just heard from my lawyer @McBrideLawNYC. The Florida defamation case against my wrongful accuser is proceeding.
The Court held that 'the defamatory statements were made with actual malice in that (she) knew the statements were untrue at the time she made them.'
SHE LIED.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Jul 23 15:14:16 2024 UTC)
The Tate brothers were accused of human trafficking and sexual assault (archived here) in Romania in 2022. However, in July 2023, the brothers filed a civil complaint (archived here) that, among other counts, alleged defamation by people involved in the case.
A post (archived here) made on Andrew Tate's X account shortly before the post making the claim contained more details about the case. Lead Stories found that G. Joseph Curley (archived here), named in the post as the presiding judge, is a judge for the 15th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida. The court encompasses the area of Palm Beach County (archived here); therefore, we used the Palm Beach County Clerk's court document search (archived here) to find documents related to the case. We located the case and its assigned case number, 50-2023-CA-011904-XXXX-MB. According to the case history found in the county clerk database, the Tate brothers have filed three amended complaints (archived here). The parties against the Tate brothers filed motions to dismiss the initial complaint and the first two amended complaints.
Through our search, we located the document with information pertinent to the claim. The document is an order on a motion to dismiss the Tate brothers' second amended complaint by one of the people who they filed the complaint against. The order on the motion to dismiss refers to eight counts; four were granted and the other four, including three defamation counts, were denied.
Dani Pinter (archived here), senior legal counsel for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center and an attorney involved in the case, published a thread (archived here) clarifying what the order on the motion to dismiss means. In the thread, she explained (archived here) that "the Court sums up the Tate's allegations and found they were enough to get past the most basic pleading requirements." Thus, Curley's order on the motion to dismiss only stated that the Tate brothers sufficiently supported their allegation at the motion to dismiss stage; it did not conclude that the person "lied."
A screenshot of the excerpt she uses to support her claim (from a noncertified copy of the document) is included below:
(Source: Screenshot taken on Tue Jul 23 20:16:54 2024 UTC)
Another post (archived here) in Pinter's thread states that "Courts do not make factual findings at the motion to dismiss stage. Under the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure the court MUST assume all of the allegations are true and draw all inferences in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs." Lead Stories corroborated Pinter's statement through information published by the Florida Bar Association in a worksheet titled "Worksheet -- Failure to State a Cause of Action" under the section "Motion to Dismiss Standard" (archived here). The section introduction reads in part:
A motion to dismiss is designed to test the legal sufficiency of the complaint, not to determine factual issues, and the allegations of the complaint must be taken as true and all reasonable inferences therefrom construed in favor of the nonmoving party.
In this case, the "nonmoving party" (archived here) is the Tate brothers, who were not the party who filed the motion to dismiss.
Other Lead Stories fact checks related to the Tate brothers can be found here.
