Paul Gapp

• 1984: Trump filed a $500 million libel suit against Paul Gapp, an architecture critic who had argued that his proposals for a skyscraper in New York were bad ideas. “Donald Trump, the developer, clearly thinks architecture critics are the most powerful people in the building business. There can be no other explanation for the $500-million libel suit he has just filed against the architecture critic of The Chicago Tribune, Paul Gapp, and the Tribune Company, taking issue with a column Mr. Gapp wrote in mid-August questioning Mr. Trump's proposal to build the world's tallest building, a 150-story skyscraper off the southern tip of Manhattan.” (New York Times, Paul Goldberger column, October 14, 1984)
• Donald Trump filed a friviolous defamation lawsuit against the architecture critic Paul Gapp for publishing critical opinions of one of his building designs. “Donald Trump […] filed two unusual lawsuits involving architects and architecture. […] One was a libel suit against the architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, Paul Gapp, for writing negatively about Mr. Trump's plan to build the world's tallest building on the East River, a scheme that Mr. Trump claimed had been ‘virtually torpedoed’ by the negative review. Mr. Trump's plan was hardly far enough along to be destroyed by anybody, let alone an out-of-town critic whose columns are not widely read in New York; suing Mr. Gapp suggested that he, and all architecture critics, had more power - and thus more celebrity - than they really do. And of course the suit did much to increase Mr. Trump's own celebrity, too.” (New York Times, December 30, 1984)
• A federal judge dismissed Trump’s defamation lawsuit against Gapp, arguing that the critic’s opinions were protected expressions under the First Amendment. “U.S. District Court judge in New York has dismissed a $500 million libel suit brought by real estate developer Donald J. Trump against The Chicago Tribune and Paul Gapp, the newspaper's architecture critic. The suit concerned an article written by Gapp that appeared in the Aug. 12, 1984, editions of The Tribune's Sunday Magazine in which Gapp criticized Trump's plan to construct a 150-story tower in lower Manhattan, which would be the tallest building in the world. […] Trump claimed the article contained ‘false and defamatory’ statements and that the accompanying illustration depicted a building that was ‘an atrocious, ugly monstrosity.’ He claimed the article damaged his reputation as a developer and ‘torpedoed’ his plans for the building. His suit sought $500 million in actual and punitive damages. In an opinion delivered last Tuesday, Judge Edward Weinfeld granted the newspaper's motion to dismiss the suit, finding that Gapp's comments and the artist's illustration both were expressions of opinion and thus protected under the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” (Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1985)