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Ike Perlmutter’s Vengeance Endgame

The battle between Perlmutter, the former Marvel chairman and Trump buddy, and his onetime Palm Beach neighbor, which started over some tennis courts, is back on the legal docket. The outcome may impact defamation cases nationwide.

ike Perlmutter
Perlmutter is asking the Florida Supreme Court to let him seek punitive damages over what he claims was Peerenboom’s campaign to “terrorize” him, including leaking to the Times faulty DNA test results purporting to link him to the hate mail. Photo: AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Eriq Gardner
March 18, 2025

AAt Mar-a-Lago in late December, Donald Trump told a story about his 82-year-old friend Ike Perlmutter, the reclusive billionaire who famously seized control of a bankrupt Marvel in the ’90s and later flipped it to Disney for $4 billion. In Trump’s version, Perlmutter went from “stone-cold broke to owning Disney,” only to walk away because of “woke Donald Duck,” a quip he trotted out in front of party guests including Sylvester Stallone.