Which Jane Doe or civil cases alleging sexual misconduct by Trump were filed, dismissed, or withdrawn, and what court records are publicly available?
Executive summary
E. Jean Carroll is the clearest civil plaintiff to have both filed and won judgments against Donald Trump for sexual misconduct and defamation, with multiple federal filings, jury verdicts and appeals publicly documented [1] [2] [3]. Other named plaintiffs — including Summer Zervos, Jill Harth and Ivana Trump — brought civil claims that were settled, withdrawn or otherwise resolved before or after public filings; reporting and public dockets show varying degrees of formal court activity and limited publicly available records for some older matters [4] [5].
1. Carroll: filed, tried, verdicts entered and appeals under way
E. Jean Carroll filed two related civil suits alleging sexual assault and later defamation, won jury damages in a 2023 federal trial and had an appeals process that preserved substantial awards, with appellate opinions and district court memoranda available in the public record [1] [2] [3]. The Southern District of New York docket includes opinions addressing the Adult Survivors Act timeliness question and evidentiary rulings, and the Second Circuit issued written opinions upholding the trial court’s decisions on admissibility and damages — materials that have been published online by courts and cited by news outlets [6] [7] [8]. The public record therefore contains trial transcripts, the judge’s opinion denying post-trial relief, the jury’s special verdict form and appellate opinions upholding portions of the judgment [2] [7].
2. Zervos: defamation suit filed, later withdrawn
Summer Zervos, a former Apprentice contestant, initiated a defamation suit after Mr. Trump publicly contested her accusations; reporting and court-tracking sources show that Zervos later withdrew the defamation case in 2021, and appellate dockets reflect state-court litigation before withdrawal rather than a federal sexual-assault trial on the merits [4]. Public filings for Zervos’s defamation claim exist in New York state appellate records while the final disposition — withdrawal — is noted in press summaries [4] [5].
3. Jill Harth and Ivana: earlier civil claims settled or recanted
Jill Harth filed a suit in the 1990s alleging sexual misconduct tied to a “calendar girl competition” and later dropped the sexual-harassment portion after settling breach-of-contract claims, according to contemporaneous reporting and later summaries [4] [5]. Ivana Trump’s rape claim surfaced in divorce proceedings decades ago and was later publicly recanted; those matters were handled in family and civil proceedings in the 1990–1991 timeframe and are reported in profiles and timelines rather than modern federal dockets [4] [5]. Public court records for these older state proceedings are more limited in modern aggregated reporting but have been summarized by news outlets [4].
4. “Jane Doe” or anonymous plaintiffs and other alleged suits — limits of the public record
Several media timelines and compilations identify “dozens” of accusers and some anonymous or pseudonymous allegations, but formal civil filings brought as Jane Doe plaintiffs against Trump are not comprehensively documented in the provided sources; reporting notes many allegations remained outside civil court or were handled privately, and available sources caution that not every allegation translated into a publicly filed lawsuit [5] [4]. The reporting and court records available to this review do not establish a catalog of anonymous Jane Doe civil filings that reached final judgments; where anonymous filings exist, state and federal dockets or news reports must be consulted directly because the present sources do not enumerate them [5] [4].
5. What court records are publicly available and where to find them
The most complete public record relates to Carroll: district-court opinions, the trial record, the special verdict and Second Circuit opinions are published and summarized on court websites and in legal aggregators; news organizations have also reported and reproduced key holdings and damage totals [6] [7] [1] [2]. For Zervos and older state-era claims (Harth, Ivana), filings or appellate notices appear in state court dockets and news timelines but are less centralized; contemporary summaries note withdrawals or settlements rather than extensive trial documents [4] [5]. This reporting set does not provide exhaustive links to every docket; to verify any particular case one should consult the Southern District of New York or relevant state court electronic dockets and the Second Circuit’s published opinions [6] [7].
6. Bottom line and open questions
The existing, public, litigated civil record is dominated by E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuits — adjudicated, awarded damages and subject to appeal with written opinions and trial materials publicly available — while other named civil claims were settled, withdrawn or resolved with fewer public court filings; assertions about numerous anonymous Jane Doe lawsuits are not substantiated as open dockets in the provided sources and require direct docket searches to confirm [1] [2] [4] [5]. Alternative perspectives include Trump’s ongoing appeals and his legal teams’ arguments over evidentiary rulings and federal-substitution defenses — material reflected in appellate briefs and opinions — and the limits of reporting mean that private settlements or unfiled allegations cannot be authenticated here without further court-document searches [7] [8].