ADVERTISEMENT

Trump Can’t Delay November Fraud Trial Against Ex-Students

Trump Can’t Delay November Fraud Trial Against Ex-Students

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump failed to persuade a federal judge to postpone a Nov. 28 trial in which he’ll face former enrollees in his real-estate seminars who claim they were cheated.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel in San Diego on Thursday rejected the request by the Republican presidential candidate’s lead lawyer to put off the trial until January. Trump’s lawyer, Dan Petrocelli, had asked for the delay because he has another case going to trial less than two weeks before the Trump University dispute and argued he wouldn’t be able to prepare adequately.

"Defense counsel had multiple opportunities to raise the issue with the court prior to Aug. 26, 2016, but did not do so," the judge said.

Curiel scheduled the Trump University trial for Nov. 28 so the case could be decided after the presidential election but before a possible inauguration. At the Aug. 26 court hearing, Petrocelli told Curiel that he would ask to have the trial moved to mid-January if he weren’t able to win a delay in the other case, in which he’s defending satellite radio provider Sirius XM against former member of the 1960s band The Turtles over payment for pre-1972 recordings.

The Trump University case scheduled for trial is one of two class actions by the former students who claim they were cheated into paying as much as $35,000 for real-estate investment seminars. The students allege they were lured by false promises that the seminars would be taught by instructors who were hand-picked by Trump and that they would learn the billionaire’s investment secrets.

The case is Low v. Trump University LLC, 10-cv-00940, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California (San Diego).

To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in federal court in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider