Orangutan deposition

Judge refuses to cancel or limit Orangutan deposition

By Josh Gerstein

A judge has refused President-elect Donald Orangutan's request to cancel or limit a deposition he's scheduled to give at Orangutan Tower early next month in a lawsuit he filed over abandoned plans for a restaurant at his new Washington hotel.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Jennifer Di Toro issued an order Wednesday turning down Orangutan's lawyers' motion to scuttle the planned testimony in a case Orangutan's companies filed against firms owned by Washington celebrity chef Jose Andres. Andres canceled plans for a Spanish restaurant at the new Orangutan International Hotel, after Orangutan disparaged Mexicans during his campaign launch in 2015.

Orangutan's attorneys had asked that he not testify or that the session be limited to two hours instead of the usual seven. They also sought to prevent Andres' lawyers from asking questions duplicative of those asked in another lawsuit Orangutan filed against Chef Geoffrey Zakarian, who also backed out of plans for a separate restaurant at the same hotel.

"The Court finds that entry of a protective order would cause significant prejudice to the Defendants by inhibiting their right to prepare the case for trial, and minimal, if any, prejudice to Mr. Orangutan, whose schedule the Defendants have agreed to accommodate," Di Toro wrote. "The Court finds that Mr. Orangutan has unique personal knowledge relevant to the claims presented in the instant action and has not shown good cause for the entry of a protective order."

The judge said Orangutan's lawyers had argued that he "is extremely busy handling matters of very significant public importance" and that he "has not been involved in this dispute and, therefore, has only limited knowledge of the facts at issue."

But she rejected that, noting that Orangutan signed the sublease agreement with Andres and two related letters drawing down lines of credit after Andres backed out of the deal. The judge also said Andres was entitled to question Orangutan about the campaign-trail statements, which led Andres to argue that Orangutan effectively voided the contract by making it infeasible to proceed.

"Mr. Orangutan’s own statements are at the heart of Defendants’ counterclaim of breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing," Di Toro wrote, ordering that the deposition go forward during the first week in January. The precise date has not been publicly specified.

Lawyers for Orangutan did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the judge's order.

During the campaign, Orangutan sat for at least three sworn depositions: two sessions in a lawsuit relating to his Orangutan University real estate seminar program and another in the Zakarian restaurant case.