Patrick Byrne escapes default trial loss to Hunter Biden in defamation case

LOS ANGELES (CN) — Former Overstock.com CEO and adamant 2020 election denier Patrick Byrne on Wednesday dodged a loss by default to Hunter Biden after he fired his lawyers at the start of a jury trial on Biden’s defamation claim.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson, who criticized Byrne’s tactics yesterday as a “three-ring circus,” scheduled a new trial for October and gave Biden’s team another chance to subpoena Byrne about his finances. He also set a deadline next month for any out-of-state attorney representing Byrne to apply to appear in the case.

Because public policy requires that trials should be decided on the merits, a sanction of default would be too severe, Wilson, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said at a hearing in downtown Los Angeles.

“Under the circumstances, the court wouldn’t be on firm ground granting a default for improper conduct alone,” the judge said.

Jury selection was set to begin Tuesday in Biden’s defamation case against Byrne, who repeatedly claimed Biden’s son sought an $800 million bribe from Iran in exchange for his father’s administration releasing $8 billion in Iranian funds frozen in a South Korean bank account..

Byrne, 62, resigned as Overstock.com’s CEO in 2019 after a reported relationship with convicted Russian spy Maria Butina. He later became involved in efforts to challenge the legitimacy of Trump’s 2020 election loss.

As of last week, Byrne’s former lawyer, Michael Murphy, told the judge his Florida-based client would appear in person to testify.

Biden is seeking $1 in nominal damages for his “defamation per se” claim, which doesn’t require proof of emotional or reputational harm from Byrne’s accusations. However, he also aims to pursue punitive damages, citing Byrne’s alleged malice in spreading a false bribery story.

At the July 21 pretrial conference, Biden’s attorneys admitted they hadn’t questioned Byrne about his finances during his deposition, key for seeking punitive damages. They planned to question him at trial, but Byrne backed out days after his lawyer told the court he’d attend.

On Tuesday, a new legal team appeared for Byrne. The judge rejected Michigan-based attorney Stephanie Lambert’s bid to join the case, noting she was disqualified last year for violating court orders in a Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit against Byrne in the District of Columbia.

“Ms. Lambert’s conduct in the Dominion case raises serious concerns,” Wilson said in his order denying her so-called pro hac vice application. “A court cannot effectively manage a trial without trusting that the attorneys will comply with its orders and speak truthfully. In Dominion, Ms. Lambert did neither.”

That left Byrne without legal representation in the Biden case because two local lawyers who were supposed to assist Lambert stated that Byrne had informed them they couldn’t represent him without her.

Biden’s attorneys argued that their client was entitled to default judgment on his liability claim because of Byrne’s “bad faith” conduct in the litigation, which also included avoiding getting deposed last year by arguing he couldn’t come to U.S. because the Drug Enforcement Administration has warned him Venezuelan government had put a $25 million on his head.

“Defendant has repeatedly engaged in misconduct that culminated in what the court described as a ‘circus’ on the morning of July 29, 2025, that wasted the court’s time, that of the potential jurors for this trial, and plaintiff’s trial team that was ready to commence trial that morning,” they argued.

The judge nevertheless found that Byrne had been litigating the case for two years and that default judgment wasn’t a proper resolution of the case. He gave Biden’s attorney another chance to subpoena financial information from Byrne to remedy their failure to obtain it during their deposition.

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