Dear Reader,

Some cases are too bad to take to trial. The facts are bad, the law is bad and the risk of having to pay up a large judgment can be prohibitive. In that situation, the party on the losing side typically tries to engage in settlement to cut their losses. But what do you do when the other party won’t settle?

Donald Trump may be about to find out.

There will be plenty of irony if his first personal loss in court comes in a civil case, not a criminal prosecution. But E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit, alleging the former president defamed her when he said she wasn’t his type and it never happened, in response to allegations he raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman’s department store in New York City in the mid-1990s, goes to trial in April of this year.