Laravel 4 - how to use a unique validation rule / unique columns with soft deletes? <p>Assume, you are trying to create a new user, with a User model ( using soft deletes ) having a unique rule for it's email address, but there exists a trashed user within the database.</p> <p>When trying to validate the new user's data, you will get a validation error, because of the existing email.</p> <p>I made some kind of extra validation within my Controllers, but wouldn't it be nice to have it all within the Model?</p> <p>Would you suggest creating a custom validation rule?</p> <p>As I haven't found a clean solution now, I am interessted in how others solved this problem.</p>