What is the docket history and final disposition of Case 5:16-cv-00797-DMG-KS in federal records?
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Executive summary
The public record assembled in the provided sources shows that a civil complaint captioned Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on April 26, 2016 under case number 5:16‑cv‑00797‑DMG‑KS (Document 1) and that multiple copies of that complaint are archived online [1][2][3]. The sources collected here, however, do not include a clear court-entered final judgment or dismissal on the docket accessible in these archives, and the final disposition is not evident from the materials supplied [4][5].
1. Filing and complaint contents
The complaint was filed April 26, 2016 as Document 1 in Case No. 5:16‑cv‑00797‑DMG‑KS in the Central District of California, and several mirror sites and public archives host a six‑page PDF of that filing with graphic allegations naming Jeffrey Epstein and Donald J. Trump among the defendants [1][2][6]. The complaint text has been circulated widely and is preserved on archive.org and other document repositories, which show the same pages and language attributed to the court filing [3][7].
2. Public docket listings and availability
CourtListener and the Free Law Project maintain a docket entry for Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump under citation 5:16‑cv‑00797, indicating the case exists in the Central District of California’s records and that the docket has been indexed by public legal databases [4][5]. Those listings confirm the case number and parties but, in the versions of the docket captured by the supplied sources, do not contain a visible sequence of orders, motions, or an ultimate dispositive entry included in these archives [4][5].
3. Third‑party mirrors, media copies and provenance concerns
Multiple third‑party hosts — including news‑site uploads, document‑sharing platforms, and PDF aggregators — reproduce the complaint PDF, sometimes sourcing the file to tabloid postings (RadarOnline) or to mirror links rather than to the official court ECF entry, which complicates provenance and verification when relying solely on those mirrors [3][8]. One of the provided files is hosted on the FactCheck infrastructure as a PDF copy of the Complaint, which shows the document has been used for public fact‑checking and archiving, but hosting alone does not substitute for a complete court docket trail showing procedural resolution [9].
4. What the provided records do not show — final disposition
The supplied materials include the initial complaint and docket index entries but do not include any signed court orders, stipulations of dismissal, default judgments, or a final judgment entry that would establish the case’s disposition in the federal record available here; therefore it is not possible from these sources to state definitively whether the case was dismissed, settled, voluntarily withdrawn, or otherwise resolved by court order [1][4][5]. The absence of dispositive docket entries in the provided archives is a substantive limitation of this review and must be acknowledged.
5. Where authoritative disposition information would be found
An authoritative confirmation of docket history and final disposition would require consulting the Central District of California’s official Electronic Case Filing (ECF) system or PACER records, or obtaining certified docket entries from the district clerk; CourtListener’s full docket page is the closest public aggregation noted in these sources but the supplied snapshot does not contain the dispositive entry [4][5]. Until those official docket entries or clerk certifications are produced, any assertion about final outcome beyond the existence and content of the complaint would be speculative based on the supplied materials.