A state court in New York, issuing 323 pages of a dizzying array of conflicting legal and factual findings plus a patched-together final compromise, ruled on Thursday that President Trump, his family and his business firm should not have to pay nearly a half-billion-dollars in penalty for years of rampant business fraud.

The ruling, though, is probably going to be put on temporary hold and is almost certain to move on now to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.  The court that issued Thursday’s massive set of opinions was known as the Appellate Division, First Judicial Department.  It was deciding an appeal from a ruling by a New York trial judge, Arthur F. Engoron.  (Judge Engoron compiled a record of more than 100 volumes, totaling almost 50,000 pages.  His final ruling came in February last year.)

Judge Engoron, after finding wide-ranging business fraud by Trump, family members, business associates and their global real-estate firm, the Trump Organization, had imposed a financial penalty of $363.9 million, plus an interest charge that pushed the total to $464.6 million.

The temporary result of the Appellate Division ruling is that this amounted to an “excessive fine” that violated the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.  (State courts, like federal courts, have power to decide constitutional questions but state court rulings on those can be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.)

Much of the ruling Thursday was curious, in the extreme.  Only two of the five judges on the deciding panel voted to uphold the trial judge’s finding of widespread fraud and to overturn that judge’s imposition of the huge financial penalty.  (The trial judge imposed that penalty on the theory that it was necessary to “disgorge ill-gotten gains” resulting from the fraud.)

Two other judges on the panel concluded that they thought the case should be sent back to Judge Ergoron for a new trial, to correct what they found to be legal errors by him.  However, those two in the end voted to join the result decided by their two colleagues, making it a four-judge majority in favor of the panel result.

The fifth judge, chastising the state attorney general even for filing the case against the Trumps and their business, purely for political reasons in opposition to Donald Trump, would have thrown out the entire case.  That judge, though, did express the view that there could be serious problems trying to stage a new trial, now that Trump is serving again as the President “at a time of high global tension.”

Besides the temporary result upholding the finding of fraud and striking down the nearly-half-billion penalty, the cobbled-together four-judge majority also temporarily overturned professional ethical sanctions against the Trump legal team for their conduct in the trial court before Judge Engoron.

The result also would uphold Judge Engoron’s appointment of an independent, outside monitor to oversee the conduct of the Trump Organization and the separate naming of an independent but inside the firm “director of compliance” with New York’s laws against business fraud.

Besides Donald Trump himself, the ruling would apply to his two sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, who have been leading the firm since their father became President, and to corporate officers Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney.  A key figure in the case against the Trumps and their firm was Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen.

The core of the state attorney general’s case against Trump, his sons, associates and firm was that they were all involved in inflating the actual value of real-estate holdings in order to obtain business loans.  Cohen’s testimony in the case provided significant support for that claim, and the two appeals court judges in favor of upholding Judge Engoron’s ruling found that the judge had a sufficient basis in evidence for the conclusion that the fraud was intentional.

Trump’s legal team strongly challenged Cohen’s credibility as a witness, noting that he had pleaded guilty of perjury for lying to a congressional committee about Trump Organization operations.

Presumably, both the state attorney general and the Trump team can file appeals to New York’s highest state court in Albany.