By Matt LaBash:
My personal favorite, however, has to be the time Trump went after Julius and Eddie Trump (no relation to Donald) for having the misfortune of sharing his last name. As Crain's tells it, back in 1984, the non-megalomaniacal-billionaire Trumps had bid on a drugstore chain, their company name being the Trump Group. But a letter was mistakenly sent to the (Donald) Trump Organization from the publisher of Drug Store News, welcoming the wrong Trump to the industry.
The next day, Trump's pitbull lawyer, the late and legendary Roy Cohn, demanded that the other Trump Group change its name by the following day or there would be blood. Trump filed suit, alleging of the other Trumps, who were born in South Africa, that they were, as Crain's put it, "nothing but a pair of late-arriving immigrants trying to piggyback on his good name."
The "impostor" Trumps pointed out that they were formidable Trumps, too. They'd been profiled by Forbes in 1976, well before most people had any idea who Donald Trump was. Before they registered "the Trump Group" in 1982, the only companies that turned up in their search were those connected with mollusk pesticides, nut candy, and toilet paper.
After the case lingered for five years, a state judge smacked down The Donald, essentially telling him his name wasn't the special snowflake he thought it was. If Donald Trump had only demanded to see the birth certificates — which he's since become adept at doing — he'd have realized that the other Trumps had been using their last name longer than he has.
No comments:
Post a Comment