Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

Order on the Swift docs: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.357.0.pdf

Lively’s motion is denied and she must produce the relevant Swift docs. That’s what the PO was for.

Baldoni’s motion to compel is also denied. Lively under no obligation to produce on Baldoni’s timeline and Baldoni refused the timeline deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Order on the Swift docs: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.357.0.pdf

Lively’s motion is denied and she must produce the relevant Swift docs. That’s what the PO was for.

Baldoni’s motion to compel is also denied. Lively under no obligation to produce on Baldoni’s timeline and Baldoni refused the timeline deal.

Another fair and no nonsense decision. Both those motions were reaches.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm pro-JB and I feel like notactuallygolden is really bad at predicting things even though I enjoy her videos. What's the disconnect here? Is Liman acting unusually for a judge? Is notactuallygolden just not as knowledgeable about federal courts? Is notactuallygolden subconsciously giving best-case-scenarios interpretations of Justin's side because he's more believable/her followers are generally more pro-JB?

I don't know where to get honest answers to these questions, because I feel like the pro-JB side will bite my head off for questioning her, while the pro-Lively side hates Freedman and can't see things objectively either. Any neutral lawyers here who can weigh in?

As a long time practicing litigator, it’s Liman. His rulings aren’t wrong, but they are unusual. We saw it from the beginning with his refusal to grant assented-to extensions.

I am pretty sure that PP responding above is a Baldoni supporter and not "neutral," which is what you asked for. I think saying that "The reason I've been calling everything wrong is wholly attributable to a renegade judge (who all but telegraphs some of his opinions in advance), and not to my own bad judgement" is a somewhat convenient take. I have practiced under judges like Liman before who keep to deadlines, don't extend the parties too much rope to hang themselves on, and are pretty no nonsense. Liman is pretty on brand for a federal judge in a busy district.

Strong disagree and original poster, google reviews of Louis Liman. There are sites that allow lawyers to do this and Liman was not well reviewed before he issued a single order in the Lively/Baldoni matter. Has a reputation with siding with the establishment.

Then shouldn't he be siding with Baldoni the harasser here, and not the harassee? He is a male judge after all. Conspiracy theories all the way down.

The establishment here is obviously Blake Lively and her husband.

It’s a little bit weird to pretend that a little up and coming production company like Wayfarer holds any power compared to the empire that Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively control. reached.

Judge Liman probably doesn't know or care if Gossip Girl was bigger than Jane the Virgin.

[Anonymous]

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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.

I think the question would be if hiring someone itself counts as a retaliatory act. Hiring is easily distinguished from "thinking about" retaliation, so your straw man fails. That said, I don't know if you framed it as paying for a bad act that didn't occur if that would be sufficient or not (on the other hand, you might be able to frame it more favorably as paying to ensure negative stories came out; it might depend on the contract wording).

She is going to need to show the hiring was retaliation to her claims of sexual harassment and not due to her threats and efforts to freeze him out of the movie. He has a right to seek help when being defamed. And yes, he can still use her behavior as a defense even if he can’t collect damages on it as a cause of action.

This is where Baldoni is deeply unlucky about some of the stuff Nathan and Abel wrote. They mentioned her weaponization of feminism and what to do if her concerns came to light, which, we'll see how they explain it, but is likely referring to her raising concerns about SH on set. There's other things they discuss, like a plan for what to do if Blake unfollows him like Ryan did (IIRC), which I would say are more about her efforts to freeze him out, and not retaliatory for raising SH.

There's lots of discovery to be had besides Abel's phone so Lively is going to see exactly how much they discussed this, at least in writing. The PR people have a very freewheeling way of discussing it (laughing at how Blake probably filed a restraining order on him) which makes me guess they all talked about this very openly. Most important will be Justin's own communications, if he discussed his concerns from the angle of her reporting him to HR (I vaguely remember someone joking about this but don't recall who) or more around his concerns about her wanting time in the editing bay and other unreasonable demands. In his text messages with Lively, he comes off pretty smart (long waits to reply to her more risqué texts, mentioning his family, not taking the bait to come when she's pumping) but he might let his guard down with those he perceives aa friends.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t think this is actually how the Lively team intended this category to be interpreted, “but only the much smaller subset of those who do so on the behalf of or at the request of a given Wayfarer Party.” With that latitude, I think WF say none.

I think that's exactly what Lively was asking for. I think you are interpreting "on behalf of or at the request of" WAY too narrowly (and more narrowly than Liman) if you don't think this is what she was asking for. As part of a contract or as a subcontractor or implementer of a contract would meet this definition, as would bots controlled by a party meeting the previous definition.

Your definition is even more narrow. I doubt there are any such “contracts.”

And I quoted the exact language used by Liman so there isn’t any interpretation in there. But as a responding attorney, and I am an experienced litigator, I would feel very comfortable interpreting that phrase narrowly, given how Liman described it in his Order.

I was reading into you interpreting Liman's words as narrow/constraining. FWIW I think there is a very good chance there were contracts involved.

No need to read into it, he said that phrase was to read in a limiting way.

[Anonymous]

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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.

I think the question would be if hiring someone itself counts as a retaliatory act. Hiring is easily distinguished from "thinking about" retaliation, so your straw man fails. That said, I don't know if you framed it as paying for a bad act that didn't occur if that would be sufficient or not (on the other hand, you might be able to frame it more favorably as paying to ensure negative stories came out; it might depend on the contract wording).

Blake did a lot to him outside of the sexual harassment claims that would justify hiring a pr person. She’s going to have to convince a jury none of that motivated him to seek pr help.

[Anonymous]

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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.

I think the question would be if hiring someone itself counts as a retaliatory act. Hiring is easily distinguished from "thinking about" retaliation, so your straw man fails. That said, I don't know if you framed it as paying for a bad act that didn't occur if that would be sufficient or not (on the other hand, you might be able to frame it more favorably as paying to ensure negative stories came out; it might depend on the contract wording).

She is going to need to show the hiring was retaliation to her claims of sexual harassment and not due to her threats and efforts to freeze him out of the movie. He has a right to seek help when being defamed. And yes, he can still use her behavior as a defense even if he can’t collect damages on it as a cause of action.

This is where Baldoni is deeply unlucky about some of the stuff Nathan and Abel wrote. They mentioned her weaponization of feminism and what to do if her concerns came to light, which, we'll see how they explain it, but is likely referring to her raising concerns about SH on set. There's other things they discuss, like a plan for what to do if Blake unfollows him like Ryan did (IIRC), which I would say are more about her efforts to freeze him out, and not retaliatory for raising SH.

There's lots of discovery to be had besides Abel's phone so Lively is going to see exactly how much they discussed this, at least in writing. The PR people have a very freewheeling way of discussing it (laughing at how Blake probably filed a restraining order on him) which makes me guess they all talked about this very openly. Most important will be Justin's own communications, if he discussed his concerns from the angle of her reporting him to HR (I vaguely remember someone joking about this but don't recall who) or more around his concerns about her wanting time in the editing bay and other unreasonable demands. [b]In his text messages with Lively, he comes off pretty smart (long waits to reply to her more risqué texts, mentioning his family, not taking the bait to come when she's pumping) but he might let his guard down with those he perceives aa friends.

I thought he did a really great job on those texts politely shutting it down when she was being inappropriate or at the very least, extremely weird and out of line which is part of why I don't this he'd necessarily be a disaster on the stand as some of the Lively people predict. Don't get my wrong, I think he's kind of a new agey California oddball which is like the opposite of "my type of person " to want to be around, but he displayed maturity and an awareness of boundaries with those texts. Lively’s interview style of taking offense to innocuous questions and going in like a viper combined with an extremely juvenile and overly sexualized sense of humor is going to need to be trained.

[Anonymous]

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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.

I think the question would be if hiring someone itself counts as a retaliatory act. Hiring is easily distinguished from "thinking about" retaliation, so your straw man fails. That said, I don't know if you framed it as paying for a bad act that didn't occur if that would be sufficient or not (on the other hand, you might be able to frame it more favorably as paying to ensure negative stories came out; it might depend on the contract wording).

She is going to need to show the hiring was retaliation to her claims of sexual harassment and not due to her threats and efforts to freeze him out of the movie. He has a right to seek help when being defamed. And yes, he can still use her behavior as a defense even if he can’t collect damages on it as a cause of action.

He wasn't defamed.

You keep framing everything in the best possible way for Baldoni, and I understand it because I do the same with Lively. That's what lawyers do. But recognize that not everyone has drunk the Baldoni Kool Aid, and regular people may not be so eager to share your take on who is the good guy here. I will grant that Baldoni's got a shot though because of the old adage, someone famous said this I think, I can't quite remember who: "It's actually sad because it just shows you have people really want to hate on women."

I understand that you don’t think that, but much of the social media universe does. If a jury feels the same, she loses. It’s perfectly legal to hire a pr firm when some one has launched an all out war on you.

[Anonymous]

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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.

I think the question would be if hiring someone itself counts as a retaliatory act. Hiring is easily distinguished from "thinking about" retaliation, so your straw man fails. That said, I don't know if you framed it as paying for a bad act that didn't occur if that would be sufficient or not (on the other hand, you might be able to frame it more favorably as paying to ensure negative stories came out; it might depend on the contract wording).

She is going to need to show the hiring was retaliation to her claims of sexual harassment and not due to her threats and efforts to freeze him out of the movie. He has a right to seek help when being defamed. And yes, he can still use her behavior as a defense even if he can’t collect damages on it as a cause of action.

He wasn't defamed.

You keep framing everything in the best possible way for Baldoni, and I understand it because I do the same with Lively. That's what lawyers do. But recognize that not everyone has drunk the Baldoni Kool Aid, and regular people may not be so eager to share your take on who is the good guy here. I will grant that Baldoni's got a shot though because of the old adage, someone famous said this I think, I can't quite remember who: "It's actually sad because it just shows you have people really want to hate on women."

I understand that you don’t think that, but much of the social media universe does. If a jury feels the same, she loses. It’s perfectly legal to hire a pr firm when some one has launched an all out war on you.

Baldoni paid Jed Wallace $30K per month -- minimum of three months "as it needs to seed" for the purpose of "creation of social fan engagement to go back and forth with any negative accounts, helping to change [the] narrative and stay on track."

That makes Jed Wallace look like a liar for the info he included in his declaration saying he didn't interact with anyone, and I sure don't think a jury will like that at all. This contract makes it clear that someone was certainly interacting with people on social media to change the story, so between this and the other conversations between Abel and Nathan it sure sounds like a smear. Who knows what else will come out?

[Anonymous]

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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.

I think the question would be if hiring someone itself counts as a retaliatory act. Hiring is easily distinguished from "thinking about" retaliation, so your straw man fails. That said, I don't know if you framed it as paying for a bad act that didn't occur if that would be sufficient or not (on the other hand, you might be able to frame it more favorably as paying to ensure negative stories came out; it might depend on the contract wording).

She is going to need to show the hiring was retaliation to her claims of sexual harassment and not due to her threats and efforts to freeze him out of the movie. He has a right to seek help when being defamed. And yes, he can still use her behavior as a defense even if he can’t collect damages on it as a cause of action.

He wasn't defamed.

You keep framing everything in the best possible way for Baldoni, and I understand it because I do the same with Lively. That's what lawyers do. But recognize that not everyone has drunk the Baldoni Kool Aid, and regular people may not be so eager to share your take on who is the good guy here. I will grant that Baldoni's got a shot though because of the old adage, someone famous said this I think, I can't quite remember who: "It's actually sad because it just shows you have people really want to hate on women."

I understand that you don’t think that, but much of the social media universe does. If a jury feels the same, she loses. It’s perfectly legal to hire a pr firm when some one has launched an all out war on you.

Baldoni paid Jed Wallace $30K per month -- minimum of three months "as it needs to seed" for the purpose of "creation of social fan engagement to go back and forth with any negative accounts, helping to change [the] narrative and stay on track."

That makes Jed Wallace look like a liar for the info he included in his declaration saying he didn't interact with anyone, and I sure don't think a jury will like that at all. This contract makes it clear that someone was certainly interacting with people on social media to change the story, so between this and the other conversations between Abel and Nathan it sure sounds like a smear. Who knows what else will come out?

That email doesn’t bother me. Perhaps he monitored and didn’t find negative that needed to be countered. $30,000 isn’t that much money on a corporate scale.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm pro-JB and I feel like notactuallygolden is really bad at predicting things even though I enjoy her videos. What's the disconnect here? Is Liman acting unusually for a judge? Is notactuallygolden just not as knowledgeable about federal courts? Is notactuallygolden subconsciously giving best-case-scenarios interpretations of Justin's side because he's more believable/her followers are generally more pro-JB?

I don't know where to get honest answers to these questions, because I feel like the pro-JB side will bite my head off for questioning her, while the pro-Lively side hates Freedman and can't see things objectively either. Any neutral lawyers here who can weigh in?

As a long time practicing litigator, it’s Liman. His rulings aren’t wrong, but they are unusual. We saw it from the beginning with his refusal to grant assented-to extensions.

I think some of his rulings are unusual, but not others (e.g., the fact NAG left any possibility the NYT suit wouldn't get dismissed was bizarre; whatever the chat boards said, pretty much every lawyer I know thought the suit was borderline frivolous/sanction worthy). I do think she's giving a pro-JB gloss to her interpretations of filings -- unclear if she means to or is just unconsciously biased.

Can you link to these lawyers and their analysis? Curious

I'm not sure what you mean? Lawyers I know... in real life (specifically, as distinct from chat boards). I don't know any actual real life lawyers who thought the NYT suit wouldn't get tossed.

Oh, curious what their analysis was. Did they say?

[Anonymous]

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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.

I think the question would be if hiring someone itself counts as a retaliatory act. Hiring is easily distinguished from "thinking about" retaliation, so your straw man fails. That said, I don't know if you framed it as paying for a bad act that didn't occur if that would be sufficient or not (on the other hand, you might be able to frame it more favorably as paying to ensure negative stories came out; it might depend on the contract wording).

She is going to need to show the hiring was retaliation to her claims of sexual harassment and not due to her threats and efforts to freeze him out of the movie. He has a right to seek help when being defamed. And yes, he can still use her behavior as a defense even if he can’t collect damages on it as a cause of action.

He wasn't defamed.

You keep framing everything in the best possible way for Baldoni, and I understand it because I do the same with Lively. That's what lawyers do. But recognize that not everyone has drunk the Baldoni Kool Aid, and regular people may not be so eager to share your take on who is the good guy here. I will grant that Baldoni's got a shot though because of the old adage, someone famous said this I think, I can't quite remember who: "It's actually sad because it just shows you have people really want to hate on women."

When is the PP even claiming he was defamed? JB alleged that the lawsuit — which necessarily post-dated the hiring of Wallace — was defamation, not that he was previously defamed. That was why his suit was dismissed. He hasn’t even alleged facts that show defamation occurred prior to Wallace’s hiring. Also, he literally signed an agreement that he wouldn’t retaliate. No lawyer worth his salt — and I’m willing to include Freeman in that despite missteps, because he’s good at optics/PR — would let him argue that he did retaliate but for a different (but related) reason. Admits what a lay person would see as wrongdoing. Puts way too much on a jury to agree with a very nuanced argument. Risks a directed verdict if the judge doesn’t buy it and says that because the alleged taking over of the move was related to the agreement in terms of underlying conduct, it’s retaliation per se. All of which is to say, Blake will need to prove retaliation and give a credible enough evidentiary story that the jury can infer cause (which is permitted); zero chance Baldoni’s defense is differently motivated retaliation.

[Anonymous]

^^ To be clear, I’m agreeing with the post I’m responding too and disagreeing with the post they’re responding to. In case it wasn’t clear.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t think this is actually how the Lively team intended this category to be interpreted, “but only the much smaller subset of those who do so on the behalf of or at the request of a given Wayfarer Party.” With that latitude, I think WF say none.

I think that's exactly what Lively was asking for. I think you are interpreting "on behalf of or at the request of" WAY too narrowly (and more narrowly than Liman) if you don't think this is what she was asking for. As part of a contract or as a subcontractor or implementer of a contract would meet this definition, as would bots controlled by a party meeting the previous definition.

Your definition is even more narrow. I doubt there are any such “contracts.”

And I quoted the exact language used by Liman so there isn’t any interpretation in there. But as a responding attorney, and I am an experienced litigator, I would feel very comfortable interpreting that phrase narrowly, given how Liman described it in his Order.

I was reading into you interpreting Liman's words as narrow/constraining. FWIW I think there is a very good chance there were contracts involved.

No need to read into it, he said that phrase was to read in a limiting way.

I can’t tell if you’re arguing just to argue. Yes, that language limited it to a subset, but I don’t think it was particularly limiting. You thought it didn’t give Lively what she wanted — I assumed because you were interpreting it very narrowly. I’m disagreeing that it’s narrow; not claiming that it doesn’t narrow the set, of course it does. If you’re looking for the spade in a pack of cards, only asking for production of the black cards is limiting the initial set but not overly narrowing in terms of your goals. Commenting that it’s not overly narrow doesn’t mean you’re denying it eliminates red cards.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm pro-JB and I feel like notactuallygolden is really bad at predicting things even though I enjoy her videos. What's the disconnect here? Is Liman acting unusually for a judge? Is notactuallygolden just not as knowledgeable about federal courts? Is notactuallygolden subconsciously giving best-case-scenarios interpretations of Justin's side because he's more believable/her followers are generally more pro-JB?

I don't know where to get honest answers to these questions, because I feel like the pro-JB side will bite my head off for questioning her, while the pro-Lively side hates Freedman and can't see things objectively either. Any neutral lawyers here who can weigh in?

As a long time practicing litigator, it’s Liman. His rulings aren’t wrong, but they are unusual. We saw it from the beginning with his refusal to grant assented-to extensions.

I think some of his rulings are unusual, but not others (e.g., the fact NAG left any possibility the NYT suit wouldn't get dismissed was bizarre; whatever the chat boards said, pretty much every lawyer I know thought the suit was borderline frivolous/sanction worthy). I do think she's giving a pro-JB gloss to her interpretations of filings -- unclear if she means to or is just unconsciously biased.

Can you link to these lawyers and their analysis? Curious

I'm not sure what you mean? Lawyers I know... in real life (specifically, as distinct from chat boards). I don't know any actual real life lawyers who thought the NYT suit wouldn't get tossed.

Oh, curious what their analysis was. Did they say?

Pretty much exactly what Liman did (at least in part): That showing that the NYT acted with actual malice was virtually impossible in the context of reporting on an actual legal filing and that his complaint didn’t even allege it in a non-conclusory fashion (i.e., didn’t alleged specific facts that would show an improper motive or intentional disregard for the truth). Notably, actual malice cannot be inferred from the factual inaccuracy of a statement and given that the reporting was couched in factual terms anyway, it wasn’t even clear the NYT published anything that would qualify as false (since the content of a lawsuit is protected directly and indirectly).