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aspect of the malicious prosecution, you can't 
tie the defendants' hands and say, You may only 
talk about information and evidence that was 
known before the lawsuit was filed. If that's 
the case, why would we ever be entitled to take 
discovery? This would be the only case I know 
in the civil arena where we wouldn't -- we 
wouldn't have taken any discovery. We could 
have tried this case on day one. 
But there was a lot of discovery taken, 
none of these exhibits create prejudice, 
they've known about them for months, they're in 
the public record, they're emails from 
Mr. Edwards himself and, Your Honor, Binger 
teaches us this: Yes, you have discretion. 
But the discretion is really driven by, as you 
said, process and fairness, and is there really 
a prejudice? 
And my client is offering every solution, 
if there is any prejudice, which we don't 
believe exists, every solution to that 
prejudice from opening up discovery, to 
extending deadlines, to moving the trial, to 
whatever it takes to eliminate the prejudice, 
as Binger suggests. 
Palm Beach Reporting Service, Inc. 
EFTA00804671

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Thank you, Judge. 
THE COURT: Thank you very much, both 
sides. I very much appreciate your spirited 
and well-informed arguments. 
Let me start by saying by agreeing to the 
delay, for whatever purpose, and it was a noble 
purpose, that being a good-faith attempt to 
mediate this case and have it resolved. And 
according to Florida law, and probably 
consistent throughout the United States, 
settlements are favored by the law, and 
certainly that rationale, I appreciate it. 
But by making that agreement, both sides 
placed themselves in some peril relative to 
bringing this case before the Court 
approximately a month prior to the case 
proceeding for trial. The case will not be 
moved from the trial docket and will proceed 
short of resolution of the case in its 
entirety, that being the Epstein -- the Edwards 
versus Epstein case in its entirety, since 
that's the only thing that is being tried at 
that time. 
The intent of the November 27, 2017 order 
barring any further discovery absent court 
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order was, albeit short, carefully and 
lengthily contemplated by this Court so as to 
be able to viably try a 2009 case without any 
further delay. That time frame is extremely 
important, and one that I believe should be and 
remain frozen in time. 
The Court recognized in December of 2017, 
shortly thereafter, that because of the number 
of pretrial motions that needed to be dealt 
with, and there were banker boxes full of 
motions and accompanying exhibits that led the 
Court to that conclusion, and albeit with 
significant reluctance, I moved the case from 
December to March. 
The order relative to the discovery, to my 
knowledge, that being the November 27, 2017 
order, never was further amended. Or it never 
was amended since there was no interim there, 
that I'm aware of. 
There may have been some discovery that 
was permitted, including the deposition of 
Mr. Edwards, but the reason why I brought the 
issue of Mr. Edwards' deposition up that was 
taken in December, '17, and the fact that he 
wasn't provided with those documents was not an 
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EFTA00804673

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issue of strategy. It was solely an issue of 
contemplation now and bringing it back a year 
ago, that if those materials were not on a 
witness list, on an attorney exhibit list, it 
would have furthered the frustration of the 
Court relative to the requirement of initial 
discovery having -- or strike that -- of 
additional discovery having to be done, and 
that could have been largely taken care of by 
virtue of the fact that Mr. Edwards was 
provided with those documents so he would be 
able to prepare and that no ultimate prejudice 
would be done. 
What has been demonstrated here today is 
that it appears from my review of these 
late-filed exhibits, that most, if not all, of 
the proposed late-added exhibits were available 
to Mr. Epstein or his counsel before Mr. Link 
and Ms. Rockenbach. And they were available 
either before the previously scheduled 
December 17th trial date, or the date set 
earlier this year in March of 2018. 
I've heard enough. 
MR. LINK: I just wanted to make a 
clarification on a date, I apologize. 
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THE COURT: Sure. 
MR. LINK: Mr. Edwards' deposition was 
taken November 10th, before the witness list 
was exchanged. 
THE COURT: Okay. Well, November 10th is 
still close enough, and I recognize now that's 
fine that the deposition was in November and 
December, it would have been before the order 
relative to the no further discovery was 
entered. But that's a very, very minor point 
in terms of the Court's overall evaluation of 
the matter. 
But getting back to what I was saying, as 
it relates to the trial set earlier this year 
in March of 2018, but for the technical issue 
that was raised, and but for the fact that the 
case was stayed by the Fourth District Court of 
Appeal despite the Court's setting of separate 
trials, despite the fact that there was no 
impediment to going forward on the Edwards 
versus Epstein malicious prosecution case, 
despite all of the reasons why the Court gave 
that, in essence, this was really not a 
counterclaim at all but for the nomenclature 
used. 
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EFTA00804675

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It was a separate action, and at least by 
implication the Fourth District Court of Appeal 
recognized the separateness of the action by 
indicating that the point was moot on appeal 
because the Edwards case was reset for trial. 
The case didn't go because they decided to stay 
it, which again, is their prerogative, I take 
no issue with that. But it was what it was. 
The point I'm making, though, is but for 
that hypertechnicality, the case would have 
gone to trial on the Edwards versus Epstein 
case. And that same captured time, that being 
the November 27th order disallowing any further 
discovery other than by court order where the 
Court contemplated that there could be some 
information that was derived as time went on 
that would be new and that would constitute the 
ability to proceed with that newly discovered 
information, that was the impetus behind that 
court order. 
But it was firm, and it was without 
equivocation as to the Court's rationale and 
reasoning that it has gone -- this case has 
gone on too long, and that the information that 
was necessary to go forward was or should have 
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EFTA00804676

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been known to both sides and their respective 
counsel, whether that counsel was representing 
Mr. Edwards in 2009, in 2010, all the way up to 
his present attorneys, Mr. Link and 
Ms. Rockenbach. 
And weren't we told that somebody was 
going to shadow their representation? Are they 
still shadowing? 
MR. LINK: Not for over a year. 
MR. SCAROLA: Yes. We were told that. 
THE COURT: Well, I didn't want to get 
them confused. 
MR. LINK: We brought out the sun and 
eliminated the shadow. Actually, is that 
reversed? 
(Thereupon, a discussion was held off 
the record.) 
THE COURT: But the point that I'm making 
is the reason why the case didn't go to trial 
in March was not that the separate claim 
brought by Mr. Edwards against Mr. Epstein was 
not at issue, and we would have been ready and 
we would have gone forward. It was not because 
that November 27th order has never been, to my 
knowledge, it was not to suggest that the 
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floodgates were going to open, and I probably 
used that term earlier in the discussion that 
culminated in the November 27th execution of 
the order. It was not to open the floodgates 
further, because there was no need to. 
I agree with the position 
Mr. Edwards that if this Court 
permit hundreds of newly added 
again, I emphasize that either 
penalized for their agreement 
because that was an agreement 
taken by 
was to wholesale 
exhibits and, 
party should be 
to hold off, 
and I never get 
involved -- I shouldn't say never -- rarely get 
involved, unless they affect the docket. I 
rarely get involved with agreements of counsel 
to put this off until now, approximately a 
month before going forward on an extensive 
trial, that this Court has put aside time, has 
refused the request of others to utilize that 
time, and we will not again take this off 
without a complete and full settlement of the 
Edwards versus Epstein claim. 
And I find that there would be extensive 
discovery required if the Court was to allow 
these exhibits to be added at this late 
juncture. And I am not going to delay, and 
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EFTA00804678

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this extensive discovery suggestion was, in 
fact, at least impliedly conceded by 
Mr. Epstein's counsel today by indicating that 
they had no objection to the case being put off 
for 30 to 60 days. 
Again, I'm not going to do that, I'm not 
going to violate an order that I put in place a 
year ago relative to not permitting discovery 
absent a court order. In effect, by allowing 
these late exhibits, it would violate the 
Court's own November 27th, 2017 order, because 
by its very definition, that being allowing 
these exhibits, it would open discovery again, 
as at least impliedly conceded by Mr. Epstein's 
counsel. 
I further agree with Mr. Edwards' 
attorneys, to the extent that any proposed new 
strategy, or at least, again, impliedly, 
concerning the work that was done by 
Mr. Epstein's prior counsel in not listing any 
of these exhibits should not and will not guide 
this Court's ruling or any rulings that have 
been made. 
I am permitting Numbers 367 and 368. 
Those being the -- what I perceived to be 
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EFTA00804679

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screenshots of Mr. Edwards' law firm's website, 
the Edwards Pottinger website printout of 
Mr. Edwards, and the Edwards Pottinger printout 
reached a jury verdict. I'm not suggesting 
that I'm going to admit those into evidence, 
only that I'm going to find that because of 
their recency, and because it deals with 
Mr. Edwards' damages, at least in part, and 
that these were captured subsequent to 
Mr. Edwards' deposition, but back in January, 
it would be a matter of presumably public 
information and, therefore, I do not find 
prejudice specifically as it relates to those 
two exhibits. 
Again, it is without prejudice, however, 
to any objections that may be made concerning 
the substantive aspects of the proposed 
admission. Likewise, I haven't yet dealt 
squarely with these other 47 emails and how 
they impact upon the Court. I am unsure. So 
I'm not going to delve into those today. 
But as far as all of the remaining 
late-filed exhibits, they will be stricken 
pursuant to the reasons that I have given at 
length today, and the rationale that I have 
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EFTA00804680

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announced. 
So, I thank you all very much. I'd ask 
that an order be prepared in conjunction with 
the rulings that I've made. 
I've been clear, so I don't expect there 
to be competing rulings here as I -- or 
competing orders as I've received in many of 
the instances in the past. I am warning both 
sides that if I receive competing orders and I 
have to take the time to go through those 
competing orders after I've already announced 
clearly, unequivocally and lengthily the 
rationale behind my rulings, that it will be a 
loser pay situation where I will award 
attorney's fees and costs as a sanction if I 
find that there is an unmeritorious 
disagreement with a proposed order. The order 
should be prepared by the movant, that being 
Mr. Epstein's counsel, with review by 
Mr. Edwards' counsel. And I expect any 
difficulties to be worked out before I receive 
competing orders. 
And if I do receive competing orders, as I 
said before, the only way I have in dealing 
with 1,600 open files is to take a rather hard 
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EFTA00804681

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stance on this so as to protect the time and 
devotion that this Court can give, which is 
only so many hours per week both here in the 
courtroom and at home, and that is week after 
week after week, unless it's during vacation 
time, which I'm still subject to phone calls 
and emergencies in many cases. 
MR. SCAROLA: Your Honor, with regard to 
the 47 emails, the privileged documents that 
are in contention, I have a copy of the 
bankruptcy hearing transcript, as well as the 
declarations that constituted the direct 
testimony considered by Judge Ray. 
Is that something that Your Honor would 
like? 
THE COURT: Yes, i would. i'll take a 
look at that. 
Is that okay with you, Mr. Link and 
Ms. Rockenbach? 
MR. LINK: Absolutely. 
I was going to ask for some assistance, 
Your Honor. Would you like us to get time to 
get in front of you? I understand you haven't 
decided whether you want to conduct an in 
camera inspection. If the Court decides it 
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wants to conduct an in camera inspection, I 
would suggest that the protocol that was agreed 
to by the parties back in 2010 would make 
sense, which is that you would have the 47 
exhibits and Mr. Scarola and I would present 
our views about those 47 exhibits before the 
Court. And we know that -- I think we know 
that we won't have a bankruptcy ruling before 
at least November 13th, which is when the 
proposed orders will be submitted by Fowler 
White and Mr. Edwards. 
Do you want us to get in front of you 
before? What can we do to help Your Honor? 
THE COURT: All right. Well, let me 
understand a couple of things, because you-all 
are living with the case and, again, this is 
but one of many for me. These 47 emails, at 
the very least, have been timely listed or not 
timely listed? 
MR. SCAROLA: No, Your Honor, have not. 
MR. VITALE: They were struck as part of 
the 700-plus exhibits that Your Honor struck on 
March 8th. 
MR. SCAROLA: But these were late-listed 
exhibits, but these have a separate issue, 
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which is the privilege. 
THE COURT: I'll give you a minute. So 
they are not part of what was comprised in 
this -- in this grouping, and I -- for the 
record, I'm referring to what I've just ruled 
on. 
MR. LINK: They're not. And the reason, 
you asked me earlier about the 47, and I 
thought there was more of a Binger analysis 
with the 47. Because they were not discovered 
by anybody until we reviewed the disk. So that 
they were not sitting, you know, being used by 
somebody in a strategic decision not to use 
them. So I think the late discovery is an 
issue as to those 47, which is different than 
the exhibits that you addressed today. 
THE COURT: So these 47, though, were part 
of the initial discovery requests and response 
because if I'm understanding what you said 
earlier, in 2010 and they were --
MR. LINK: Yes, sir. 
MR. SCAROLA: Listed on the privilege log. 
THE COURT: -- listed as privileged. 
MR. SCAROLA: Listed on a privilege log 
and no ruling was ever made in response to any 
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defense challenge to that privilege log. 
MR. LINK: That's correct. 
MR. SCAROLA: And while -- well, I don't 
want to get too deep into these arguments. 
THE COURT: Let's not get too deep into 
them, because I think that they do have a bit 
of a different connotation and import as it 
relates to whether or not late-filed, because 
if they were contained in the 2010 privilege 
log, it's very difficult to suggest that there 
would be prejudice as to knowledge on the part 
of those documents being potentially utilized. 
So, what I would like you to do then is 
we're getting dangerously close on time 
MR. VITALE: Your Honor, just a 
clarification for the record. 
Along with the disk, there was a folder 
containing 32 hard copies of materials that 
Fowler White printed from the disk. 
If my memory serves me correctly, 22 of 
those documents were listed on Mr. Edwards' 
privilege log, one of them had handwritten 
notations. So in terms of the discovery issue, 
I just wanted the record to reflect that hard 
copies were, in fact, in possession of 
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Mr. Edwards' attorneys. 
THE COURT: Okay. All of that I'll take 
into consideration at one time. But I 
appreciate you bringing that to my attention, 
Mr. Vitale. But I think, you know, obviously 
we have to deal with this sooner rather than 
later. 
I'll check what's going on, I know that --
I think I told you, the week of November 11th 
I'm going to be pretty much away or otherwise 
unavailable. I have the 13th, 14th and 15th 
that I'll be at this conference speaking as 
part of the judicial panel in New Orleans for 
those three days. Monday is a holiday, that 
being the 12th. The 16th I've indicated to you 
that I have six hours of nonjury trial in three 
different cases. And then we have the 
Thanksgiving holiday where I'm going to be on 
vacation. 
So what I'm going to ask you to do is 
this. I would suspect that this is pretty much 
teed up and that you-all know essentially what 
your respective positions are going to be. So, 
what I'd like you to do, Mr. Link, is have 
your -- I presume it's going to be your motion? 
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EFTA00804686

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MR. LINK: It is. 
THE COURT: No, I don't know what you're 
going to call it, but whatever your motion is, 
to be filed and briefed by next Friday. 
MR. LINK: A week from today? 
THE COURT: Yes, sir. 
MR. LINK: Yes, sir. No problem. 
THE COURT: And then, Mr. Scarola, your 
response will be due to me by the following 
Friday. 
MR. SCAROLA: Yes, sir. 
MR. LINK: Would it be helpful, Your 
Honor, if we did it assuming Judge Ray rules 
one way and assuming Judge Ray rules the other 
way for you to consider? Does that help you? 
THE COURT: That's fine. You know, 
whatever you think is best. I'm not going to 
harness you there. I just want them as brief 
as possible, please. 
MR. LINK: Yes, sir. 
THE COURT: Because what I'm going to do 
then is during the vacation week, even though 
I'm hopeful to be away for at least a few of 
those days, I have to be back on Wednesday for 
a medical procedure on the 21st, so I'm going 
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EFTA00804687

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to be back in town at least by the 21st. 
MR. LINK: Okay. 
THE COURT: Okay? So if you get those to 
me by the 16th, I'll have that weekend, and 
then -- I'm not going to take it with me on my 
vacation time, away from the family. But I'll 
have it also during the following weekend, and 
then I'll make some time available for you 
during the week of the 25th, even though --
I'll show you my calender, if you care to look 
at it. 
MR. LINK: We know it's full. 
THE COURT: It doesn't look particularly 
good. 
MR. LINK: Your Honor, for purposes of 
making the argument, may we refer to the 47 
exhibits? They're under seal, so I want to be 
careful what we do. 
THE COURT: Well, that's a good question. 
MR. SCAROLA: I think it's a question 
that's easily answered, Your Honor, and that is 
that this must be dealt with the way any 
privileged issue is dealt with. You don't get 
to argue from the contents of the documents. 
Because you're not supposed to have the 
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documents unless and until the Court decides 
that they should be released. It is not 
appropriate for counsel to be making arguments 
based upon the content of the documents. 
MR. LINK: The only reason I disagree, and 
I would agree with that proposition, is that 
the parties contemplated turning the documents 
over, work product documents, to Mr. Epstein's 
lawyer so they would both have a set to argue 
to Magistrate Carney. The issue with these 47, 
that Mr. Scarola has said they're 
attorney-client privilege documents. If they 
are attorney-client privilege, then they should 
not have been turned over. 
We have other reasons for waiver, such as 
the crime fraud and they were provided to an 
adversary. 
THE COURT: And remind me, Magistrate 
Carney, was he involved in the bankruptcy or 
was he involved in something else? 
MR. LINK: He was involved in 
he was 
appointed by Judge Ray. 
THE COURT: As a magistrate in the 
bankruptcy --
MR. LINK: As a special master, I should 
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say. Not a magistrate, special master. 
MR. SCAROLA: After which Judge Crow made 
it very clear that he would be ruling on issues 
of privilege with regard to any privilege 
assertions in a case in which the subpoena was 
issued over which he was presiding. So Judge 
Carney never made --
MR. LINK: We don't disagree, Judge 
Hafele. 
MR. SCAROLA: Judge Carney never made any 
privilege --
THE COURT: No, I'm not suggesting he did. 
That wasn't really my intent at all. And even 
if he did, I don't think that it would be any 
way, shape or form binding here. 
MR. LINK: We agree you're the person. 
THE COURT: So what I will need is the 
emails sent to my office under seal. I will be 
the only one to review those emails. 
What I then would need from you is the 
motion that's filed, and I don't know how there 
can be a viable discussion without discussing 
the contents of the emails in a setting that 
the memoranda is sent under seal, and for 
attorneys' eyes only. 
Palm Beach Reporting Service, Inc. 
EFTA00804690