On April 13, 2023, the en banc District of Columbia Court of Appeals issued its decision in response to a certified question from the Second Circuit. Rather than weighing in directly on whether former President Trump’s statements concerning E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault allegations were within the scope of his employment under the respondeat superior standards in District of Columbia law, the en banc court took the opportunity to restate and clarify the general respondeat superior inquiry. District of Columbia practitioners who watched the oral argument may have breathed a sigh of relief that the court resisted the temptation to tailor a legal standard of great importance to ordinary tort litigation in the District of Columbia to the unique circumstances of a case presented by litigation in New York. The court also declined the Second Circuit’s invitation to adopt an “internalization” standard that places on the employer broad liability for foreseeable harms. In addition, the court declined to adopt a categorical rule “that the conduct of elected officials speaking to the press is always within the scope of that official’s employment.” Trump v. Carroll, D.C. Ct. App. No. 22-SP-745, Slip Op. at 39 (Apr. 13, 2023). Instead, the court explicated a fact-intensive scope of employment inquiry which it concluded was for the factfinder in the case, not something that could be decided as a matter of law on the record before the court. Id. at 41.
The court gave the following...
Last month, the DOJ issued a memorandum announcing its priorities for the newly-created National Fraud Enforcement Division (“Fraud Division”), signaling the administration’s intent to create a sin...