Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

[Anonymous]

I'm a lawyer who practices in federal court with some frequency (not SDNY but DC and VA) and want to weight in on the Liman question.

I don't think Liman is an outlier, even if some of his decisions have surprised me. He's really good about explaining his reasoning for everything, especially for the decisions that have been particularly surprising, and in context the decisions make sense.

I think that this case is the outlier, specifically the attorney behavior on both sides. Between Freedman's press-courting showboating and Gottlieb/Hudson's onslaught of motions, including an unusual number that are punitive and/or petty, it's just all very extra even by celebrity case standards. My sense is that Liman is making decisions that keep both sides in check in this respect, and that in particular he is looking to protect his court from becoming a three ring circus at trial. He consistently makes decisions designed to keep the case on schedule and narrow focus. If this thing goes to trial, I think he wants to be able to keep a lot of the really show, melodramatic stuff out of the courtroom if he can. It's making him more severe in some of his rulings than I think most district court judges would be.

Basically I think he's trying to keep both sides on short leashes. When I view his decisions in that light, nothing he's done strikes me as strange.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

Unless Wallace was promoting positive commentary about Justin. There is actually a fair amount he could be doing that wouldn’t involve Lively at all. Same for all the pr folks, positive stories about their clients is their business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a lawyer who practices in federal court with some frequency (not SDNY but DC and VA) and want to weight in on the Liman question.

I don't think Liman is an outlier, even if some of his decisions have surprised me. He's really good about explaining his reasoning for everything, especially for the decisions that have been particularly surprising, and in context the decisions make sense.

I think that this case is the outlier, specifically the attorney behavior on both sides. Between Freedman's press-courting showboating and Gottlieb/Hudson's onslaught of motions, including an unusual number that are punitive and/or petty, it's just all very extra even by celebrity case standards. My sense is that Liman is making decisions that keep both sides in check in this respect, and that in particular he is looking to protect his court from becoming a three ring circus at trial. He consistently makes decisions designed to keep the case on schedule and narrow focus. If this thing goes to trial, I think he wants to be able to keep a lot of the really show, melodramatic stuff out of the courtroom if he can. It's making him more severe in some of his rulings than I think most district court judges would be.

Basically I think he's trying to keep both sides on short leashes. When I view his decisions in that light, nothing he's done strikes me as strange.

I don’t think you are saying anything different than I did. “More severe” than most district courts leads to results most would not predict. I said from the get go that his decisions weren’t “wrong”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

Unless Wallace was promoting positive commentary about Justin. There is actually a fair amount he could be doing that wouldn’t involve Lively at all. Same for all the pr folks, positive stories about their clients is their business.

I thought his affidavit said he wasn't doing that either. Only tracking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

Unless Wallace was promoting positive commentary about Justin. There is actually a fair amount he could be doing that wouldn’t involve Lively at all. Same for all the pr folks, positive stories about their clients is their business.

Agree that if Wayfarer/TAG/Wallace can show that they were just promoting positive stories about Justin and Wayfarer and staying neutral on Blake, they will beat the retaliation claims.

There are a few messages from the Jen Abel phone that indicate they did go after Blake though, including with Wallace's team, and that some of what they did was seeding negative stories online. There could be some explanations for those messages that are exculpating -- maybe they wanted to go after Blake but didn't because cooler head prevailed, or because they discovered they didn't need to. It's also possible that TAG or Wallace essentially lied to Wayfarer about what they were doing, that they said said they would see negative stories about Blake and then those popped up on their own without any effort, so TAG and Wallace claimed to have caused it (in order to justify their large fees).

One legal question I have is what if the facts show that Baldoni and Wayfarer absolutely wanted to go after Blake and hired TAG and Wallace specifically to spread negative content about her online, but then they didn't? Would Baldoni/Wayfarer still potentially be liable for trying to retaliate? Would just hiring these people and giving them the directive to trash Blake in the press be enough for a jury to find them guilty of retaliation? I truly have no idea.

[Anonymous]

What I think happened, and continues to happen, is Blake is unlikable. That’s been the case since her attacks on Leighton in Gossip Girls days. It all gets amplified by social media algorithms. A creator posts Blake in a cringeworthy interview and gets enormous amounts of interaction. They see the stats and have incentive to post more negative things about Blake because it gets likes and shares, and so on. The algorithms boost these posts because of their popularity and that begets more likes and shares. Not sure if that makes it organic but certainly has nothing to do with WF. The content makers aren’t responding to commands from WF, they are responding to what gets them likes and followers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

Unless Wallace was promoting positive commentary about Justin. There is actually a fair amount he could be doing that wouldn’t involve Lively at all. Same for all the pr folks, positive stories about their clients is their business.

Agree that if Wayfarer/TAG/Wallace can show that they were just promoting positive stories about Justin and Wayfarer and staying neutral on Blake, they will beat the retaliation claims.

There are a few messages from the Jen Abel phone that indicate they did go after Blake though, including with Wallace's team, and that some of what they did was seeding negative stories online. There could be some explanations for those messages that are exculpating -- maybe they wanted to go after Blake but didn't because cooler head prevailed, or because they discovered they didn't need to. It's also possible that TAG or Wallace essentially lied to Wayfarer about what they were doing, that they said said they would see negative stories about Blake and then those popped up on their own without any effort, so TAG and Wallace claimed to have caused it (in order to justify their large fees).

One legal question I have is what if the facts show that Baldoni and Wayfarer absolutely wanted to go after Blake and hired TAG and Wallace specifically to spread negative content about her online, but then they didn't? Would Baldoni/Wayfarer still potentially be liable for trying to retaliate? Would just hiring these people and giving them the directive to trash Blake in the press be enough for a jury to find them guilty of retaliation? I truly have no idea.

The cause of action requires actual acts of retaliation. I thought about it, but didn’t actually do it isn’t enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

Unless Wallace was promoting positive commentary about Justin. There is actually a fair amount he could be doing that wouldn’t involve Lively at all. Same for all the pr folks, positive stories about their clients is their business.

I thought his affidavit said he wasn't doing that either. Only tracking.

His affidavit is confusing to me because he also says he was the only person from Street Relations who worked on the Wayfarer account, but there are emails where he references his team and also messages where Nathan or Abel refer to "Jed and his team."

I am also wondering what he means by tracking because both Jonesworks and TAG were also monitoring/tracking social media for Justin and the movie -- this was part of their contract with Wayfarer. And Wallace got paid quite a bit. It would be odd to me if he was being paid that much just do duplicate work already being done by two other agencies.

I suspect that the monitoring Wallace was doing was targeted on Lively, not Justin. If he didn't actually seed any negative content about Lively, I do think he was doing like a granular tracking of how sentiment about Lively was tracking on places like Reddit and comment sections on tabloids, and was providing info about this to TAG and Wayfarer. This could still be problematic for Wayfarer because why would they need such detailed sentiment analysis on Lively? If she can show that, for instance, Melissa Nathan was planting negative stories about Blake in tabloids, and then Wallace was closely tracking how those stories were playing online and providing feedback about which narratives were gaining traction and which were not, thus enabling Nathan to better target the kinds of negative content people were responding to and promote that narrative in other ways, that would still be a retaliation campaign. Even if Wallace was only doing "monitoring" and reporting back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

I think it's possible Wallace/Nathan claimed they were doing more than they did to justify those fees. But the following is one text I can't get out of my head:

"We've also started to see a shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team's efforts to shift the narrative towards shining a spotlight on Blake and Ryan."

While I think a lot of their efforts could have been geared toward disseminating positive info about Justin and not being negative to Blake and Ryan, this text explicitly states that they were seeding information about Blake and Ryan. I don't think Jed and Melissa ever addressed this specific text in his filings, but hopefully someone can correct me if I'm wrong?

I still think the backlash was 99% organic, and anything Jed did had a negligible effect, as many of us have really disliked Blake for years because of her support of Woody Allen, plantation wedding, etc. and that graph Blake provided shows negative sentiment had been occurring prior to Jed's hiring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

Unless Wallace was promoting positive commentary about Justin. There is actually a fair amount he could be doing that wouldn’t involve Lively at all. Same for all the pr folks, positive stories about their clients is their business.

Agree that if Wayfarer/TAG/Wallace can show that they were just promoting positive stories about Justin and Wayfarer and staying neutral on Blake, they will beat the retaliation claims.

There are a few messages from the Jen Abel phone that indicate they did go after Blake though, including with Wallace's team, and that some of what they did was seeding negative stories online. There could be some explanations for those messages that are exculpating -- maybe they wanted to go after Blake but didn't because cooler head prevailed, or because they discovered they didn't need to. It's also possible that TAG or Wallace essentially lied to Wayfarer about what they were doing, that they said said they would see negative stories about Blake and then those popped up on their own without any effort, so TAG and Wallace claimed to have caused it (in order to justify their large fees).

One legal question I have is what if the facts show that Baldoni and Wayfarer absolutely wanted to go after Blake and hired TAG and Wallace specifically to spread negative content about her online, but then they didn't? Would Baldoni/Wayfarer still potentially be liable for trying to retaliate? Would just hiring these people and giving them the directive to trash Blake in the press be enough for a jury to find them guilty of retaliation? I truly have no idea.

The cause of action requires actual acts of retaliation. I thought about it, but didn’t actually do it isn’t enough.

Right but hiring TAG and Wallace and directing them to smear Lively is an "actual act of retaliation." It's not just thinking about it. I am not sure how the law handles a situation where the defendant clearly had every intent of retaliating and (1) hires people to do it, (2) tells them explicitly to commit acts of retaliation, (3) is told by these people that these retaliatory acts are happening and have been successful, and then (4) pays these people for the retaliation. But turns out the people lied and never actually did anything, just took credit for organic bad press that was happening online.

Please note I'm talking totally hypothetically here -- I'm not saying this has been proven, I'm just trying to understand what the outcome would be if what I just described was proven.

[Anonymous]

Let’s remember that Blake was threatening the Wayfarer defendants that she was going to have stories published about them in the Times and had already froze them out of their own film. In such circumstances, I would pay a good chunk of money to make sure bad things weren’t being said about me on reddit, etc . at her bequest. She certainly gave them a reason to fear negative press or social media campaigns led by her or at least, her money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

Unless Wallace was promoting positive commentary about Justin. There is actually a fair amount he could be doing that wouldn’t involve Lively at all. Same for all the pr folks, positive stories about their clients is their business.

Agree that if Wayfarer/TAG/Wallace can show that they were just promoting positive stories about Justin and Wayfarer and staying neutral on Blake, they will beat the retaliation claims.

There are a few messages from the Jen Abel phone that indicate they did go after Blake though, including with Wallace's team, and that some of what they did was seeding negative stories online. There could be some explanations for those messages that are exculpating -- maybe they wanted to go after Blake but didn't because cooler head prevailed, or because they discovered they didn't need to. It's also possible that TAG or Wallace essentially lied to Wayfarer about what they were doing, that they said said they would see negative stories about Blake and then those popped up on their own without any effort, so TAG and Wallace claimed to have caused it (in order to justify their large fees).

One legal question I have is what if the facts show that Baldoni and Wayfarer absolutely wanted to go after Blake and hired TAG and Wallace specifically to spread negative content about her online, but then they didn't? Would Baldoni/Wayfarer still potentially be liable for trying to retaliate? Would just hiring these people and giving them the directive to trash Blake in the press be enough for a jury to find them guilty of retaliation? I truly have no idea.

The cause of action requires actual acts of retaliation. I thought about it, but didn’t actually do it isn’t enough.

Right but hiring TAG and Wallace and directing them to smear Lively is an "actual act of retaliation." It's not just thinking about it. I am not sure how the law handles a situation where the defendant clearly had every intent of retaliating and (1) hires people to do it, (2) tells them explicitly to commit acts of retaliation, (3) is told by these people that these retaliatory acts are happening and have been successful, and then (4) pays these people for the retaliation. But turns out the people lied and never actually did anything, just took credit for organic bad press that was happening online.

Please note I'm talking totally hypothetically here -- I'm not saying this has been proven, I'm just trying to understand what the outcome would be if what I just described was proven.

I don’t think she has three and four.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

I think it's possible Wallace/Nathan claimed they were doing more than they did to justify those fees. But the following is one text I can't get out of my head:

"We've also started to see a shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team's efforts to shift the narrative towards shining a spotlight on Blake and Ryan."

While I think a lot of their efforts could have been geared toward disseminating positive info about Justin and not being negative to Blake and Ryan, this text explicitly states that they were seeding information about Blake and Ryan. I don't think Jed and Melissa ever addressed this specific text in his filings, but hopefully someone can correct me if I'm wrong?

I still think the backlash was 99% organic, and anything Jed did had a negligible effect, as many of us have really disliked Blake for years because of her support of Woody Allen, plantation wedding, etc. and that graph Blake provided shows negative sentiment had been occurring prior to Jed's hiring.

I agree that a lot of the backlash was organic, maybe as much as 99% or even 100%.

But it may not matter because part of the problem here is that all of this supposedly happened as IEWU, with Blake starring, was going out. If Baldoni/Wayfarer took any actions that contributed to the negative press and pile on around Blake, at a time when ordinarily you'd expect them to be promoting Blake and working with her PR to combat negative press/impressions of her for the sake of the movie, this will be a very bad look at trial.

I expect part of the argument at trial to be something along the lines of: Baldoni and Wayfarer were so determined to destroy Blake's reputation that they were willing to sacrifice the movie they'd made with her in order to do it. This is a very problematic narrative for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc.

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.

Unless Wallace was promoting positive commentary about Justin. There is actually a fair amount he could be doing that wouldn’t involve Lively at all. Same for all the pr folks, positive stories about their clients is their business.

Agree that if Wayfarer/TAG/Wallace can show that they were just promoting positive stories about Justin and Wayfarer and staying neutral on Blake, they will beat the retaliation claims.

There are a few messages from the Jen Abel phone that indicate they did go after Blake though, including with Wallace's team, and that some of what they did was seeding negative stories online. There could be some explanations for those messages that are exculpating -- maybe they wanted to go after Blake but didn't because cooler head prevailed, or because they discovered they didn't need to. It's also possible that TAG or Wallace essentially lied to Wayfarer about what they were doing, that they said said they would see negative stories about Blake and then those popped up on their own without any effort, so TAG and Wallace claimed to have caused it (in order to justify their large fees).

One legal question I have is what if the facts show that Baldoni and Wayfarer absolutely wanted to go after Blake and hired TAG and Wallace specifically to spread negative content about her online, but then they didn't? Would Baldoni/Wayfarer still potentially be liable for trying to retaliate? Would just hiring these people and giving them the directive to trash Blake in the press be enough for a jury to find them guilty of retaliation? I truly have no idea.

The cause of action requires actual acts of retaliation. I thought about it, but didn’t actually do it isn’t enough.

Right but hiring TAG and Wallace and directing them to smear Lively is an "actual act of retaliation." It's not just thinking about it. I am not sure how the law handles a situation where the defendant clearly had every intent of retaliating and (1) hires people to do it, (2) tells them explicitly to commit acts of retaliation, (3) is told by these people that these retaliatory acts are happening and have been successful, and then (4) pays these people for the retaliation. But turns out the people lied and never actually did anything, just took credit for organic bad press that was happening online.

Please note I'm talking totally hypothetically here -- I'm not saying this has been proven, I'm just trying to understand what the outcome would be if what I just described was proven.

I don’t think she has three and four.

There are multiple texts where Abel and Nathan either report directly to Baldoni/Heath or talk about reporting to them about the success of the activities, including praising the work of "Jed and his team." That would seem to fulfill #3, especially if discovery reveals additional communications where Nathan and Wallace talk about the "success" of their activities.

For #4, presumably these people got paid. There will either be payments or not. Certainly they were contracted for work they expected to be paid for. If they weren't paid, yes, the whole thing falls apart.

But what if they said they'd succeeded, and they were paid, and then at trial Nathan and Wallace testify that they didn't actually do the retaliatory acts they were hired to do? What happens then?