Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To each his own. I'm a lawyer and thought the thread was more interesting the last couple of days with less of the bickering.

Same! -Not a Lawyer

[Anonymous]

I'm a lawyer and like getting into the nitty gritty details. The discussion of whether it makes sense for Freedman to take Lively's deposition now, before all docs are in, and the likelihood of the judge allowing her to be re-deposed, is interesting to me because Freedman has a unique litigating style that can be very successful but seems high risk to me, a risk averse lawyer. So I'm curious about strategic details like this. I am also interested in how Freedman uses legal moves to manipulate PR in his clients favor, and how he balances certain strategic risks in the legal side against potential PR wins on that side.

I also think Gottlieb and Hudson have made some interesting strategic moves in their motions game, so yeah, keeping an eye in that too.

I feel like this is an interesting case study. If I was teaching a law school course on procedure or civil litigation, I think this would be a fun case to use.

[Anonymous]

I’m a lawyer and I’m at the pool today ha.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To each his own. I'm a lawyer and thought the thread was more interesting the last couple of days with less of the bickering.

I don’t completely disagree, and I think a real person/lawyer could find some of the latest legal chatter interesting. But I highly doubt a regular working lawyer, as these pro Lively people usually claim to be, could be following a case 24/7 like these two. Of course now they’re being quiet to show they’re off ‘working’ on their billable hours. And soon maybe we’ll get a post or two with some ‘lolz’ claiming I’m crazy/paranoid and rehashing the post where someone claiming to be a pro Baldoni poster was fearful of being tracked. (IMO, that was one of them faking a post)

‘See, all Baldoni people are lunatics!’
(Sarcasm)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a lawyer and like getting into the nitty gritty details. The discussion of whether it makes sense for Freedman to take Lively's deposition now, before all docs are in, and the likelihood of the judge allowing her to be re-deposed, is interesting to me because Freedman has a unique litigating style that can be very successful but seems high risk to me, a risk averse lawyer. So I'm curious about strategic details like this. I am also interested in how Freedman uses legal moves to manipulate PR in his clients favor, and how he balances certain strategic risks in the legal side against potential PR wins on that side.

I also think Gottlieb and Hudson have made some interesting strategic moves in their motions game, so yeah, keeping an eye in that too.

I feel like this is an interesting case study. If I was teaching a law school course on procedure or civil litigation, I think this would be a fun case to use.

The NYTimes case could have been an interesting case study to me, sucks it was dismissed. So many gray areas, like the VanZan subpoena. I still also maintain that Megan Twohey overstepped the bounds of the fair report privilege. That video was sloppy as hell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To each his own. I'm a lawyer and thought the thread was more interesting the last couple of days with less of the bickering.

Same! -Not a Lawyer

You probably are a Liveky supporter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To each his own. I'm a lawyer and thought the thread was more interesting the last couple of days with less of the bickering.

I don’t completely disagree, and I think a real person/lawyer could find some of the latest legal chatter interesting. But I highly doubt a regular working lawyer, as these pro Lively people usually claim to be, could be following a case 24/7 like these two. Of course now they’re being quiet to show they’re off ‘working’ on their billable hours. And soon maybe we’ll get a post or two with some ‘lolz’ claiming I’m crazy/paranoid and rehashing the post where someone claiming to be a pro Baldoni poster was fearful of being tracked. (IMO, that was one of them faking a post)

‘See, all Baldoni people are lunatics!’
(Sarcasm)

This ☝️ what you’re doing here, unprovoked, is what makes the thread tiresome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To each his own. I'm a lawyer and thought the thread was more interesting the last couple of days with less of the bickering.

I don’t completely disagree, and I think a real person/lawyer could find some of the latest legal chatter interesting. But I highly doubt a regular working lawyer, as these pro Lively people usually claim to be, could be following a case 24/7 like these two. Of course now they’re being quiet to show they’re off ‘working’ on their billable hours. And soon maybe we’ll get a post or two with some ‘lolz’ claiming I’m crazy/paranoid and rehashing the post where someone claiming to be a pro Baldoni poster was fearful of being tracked. (IMO, that was one of them faking a post)

‘See, all Baldoni people are lunatics!’
(Sarcasm)

This ☝️ what you’re doing here, unprovoked, is what makes the thread tiresome.

Ironically, when the thread gets bumped for stuff like this, I end up checking the docket for new stuff to get it back on topic (which to me is a good thing, but some Baldoni supporters apparently consider this flooding the thread to get it off topic, so we have some very divergent views of this thread).

Lively responded on the MTC on Wayfarer employees Koslow and Case. Liman has set a hearing for Tuesday with just them and Lively (not Wayfarer counsel). Reading the docs now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Attorney Maxwell Breed has filed a response on behalf on the two non-party TAG employees/former employees, here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.358.0.pdf

These are the TAG people who Lively offered to pay the costs of hosting and producing their docs to enable them to produce them, but later could not agree on terms and dates etc.

I thought a little fun thing about this is that his deadline is today, and he filed his letter after hours, at like 9:30 EST. His letter refers to a declaration and nine exhibits, which were not attached. So it was weird when nothing more got filed on the docket until about 15 minutes ago: The declaration!

So he and/or his paralegal have about 45 minutes to get those remaining 9 exhibits filed. Unless there is some lag between CourtListener and Pacer (I haven't noticed that before). Good luck Mr. Breed!

His letter seems pretty reasonable TBH.

I don’t think he’s correct that Lively’s offer to pay the costs of hosting and producing the docs for the production means that the requests as written were overbroad. I think it just means Lively wants a real production with metadata and not a bunch of screen shots of texts.

I do agree it’s overbroad to require texts on which parties are included, and thought Lively agreed not to include those. But then Breed also demanded nothing from after 12/2024 be produced! Liman has already agreed Lively should get communications from after the lawsuit was filed, from the party PR reps, anyway. So I think he’ll be required to produce the later tests.

Responding to self here to note that Breed’s 9 exhibits did get filed, you can see them here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ItEndsWithCourt/comments/1lfey19/all_of_the_exhibits_from_the_case_and_butler/

How is Breed a partner, though? He has filed 9 exhibits showing different parts of the same email string that are all contained, I believe, in the single exhibit that Lively filed. That’s why the attorneys use the one email string over and over in a discovery dispute, so you can just use that one email as your exhibit. Now the judge’s clerk needs to go through these additional 9 exhibits for no reason when Breed could have just cited the already existing filing. Silly and unnecessary.

I also find Breed’s language about “We needn’t, any of us, play at saber rattling” etc to be a bit dramatic in here. Is he British or something? This is federal litigation and Liman has set hard discovery deadlines, with substantial completion due well before Breed’s 21 days would end. Less time on fancy language and more time on compliance would be helpful imho.

Home from end of school pool day with a special present from Judge Liman:

First of all, Lively filed a Reply to Breed's letter, saying hey just because we negotiated down what you might owe (for two months) and you kept asking for more at the last minute doesn't mean the initial subpoena was overburdensome and that having wasted our time for two months you shouldn't be made to comply in full with the subpoena as originally written, now. He notes that the Wayfarer parties (and in fact no parties) have yet produced any materials that provide either of these two people's communications, and the time that Lively might have had one or two months ago to piece together what had been provided by the third parties vs provided by Wayfarer etc. is now passed.

Gottlieb also mentions some juicy sounding emails in here on which these two were copied. The first footnote also side-eyes all nine attachments that Breed attached to his opposition as I noted above, explaining that they were just all the same document that Gottlieb et al had attached to their motion in the first place. He says: "evidence their participation in the retaliatory digital effort: in an email from Abel to Case, Koslow, Heath, and Nathan discussing whether TAG’s fee includes “social media mitigation and proactive fan posting to counter the narrative” (ECF No. 84 ¶ 225), in a text from Case to Matthew Mitchell, Nathan, and Abel regarding contents of “HR complaints” from set (id. ¶ 263), in a text from Abel to Mitchell, Nathan, Case, and Koslow discussing the need to “position” reported-upon HR complaints (id. ¶ 264), and in a text from Abel to Mitchell, Nathan, Case, and Koslow discussing an allegation that Baldoni “invited [a woman] up to his hotel room years ago,” and a text from Koslow in response suggesting to “chat to Jed as well on this” (id. ¶ 256). See Exhibit A (here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.363.1.pdf).

Lively Reply: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.363.0.pdf

Liman issued a memo endorsement saying there will be a hearing on this issue -- with just the Lively attorneys and Breed & co (i.e., no Freedman) on Tuesday June 24 (day after new complaint and potentially Lively's deposition if it goes as originally scheduled) via Teams: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.364.0.pdf

[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?

NAG with a video about Jed Wallace, putting his affidavit up against those parts of the email that seem to contradict his email, noting the possibility that he hired subcontractors, and questioning whether he would really get paid $90K over 3 months to just monitor socials: https://www.tiktok.com/@notactuallygolden/video/7518047871824858382

[Anonymous]

Also the law firm Geragos and Geragos is substituting in (for what I understand was a top First Amendment firm) for James Vituscka. If you remember, he was the guy who wrote a bunch of articles about the Swift and Lively relationship, and who had originally texted to Freedman and Nathan (?) that "she" (which in context seemed like it might be Lively's PR rep Sloane) was now saying that Baldoni had assaulted Lively, which he later wrote a declaration saying was a misunderstanding. That (1) he meant Lively, not Sloane; and (2) he didn't mean assault, he meant harassed, i.e., as per the lawsuit.

Geragos and Geragos has a long term relationship with Freedman, they often represent clients cooperatively together.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.635145/gov.uscourts.nysd.635145.154.0.pdf

[Anonymous]

Why does Vituscka need to sub? I thought the MTC against him was either withdrawn or mooted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does Vituscka need to sub? I thought the MTC against him was either withdrawn or mooted.

It's not really clear to me. Vituscka had previously offered to produce all his texts with Freedman in exchange for being out, and then Liman issued his decision which made everything about Sloane moot as claims against her were dismissed. I assume Vituscka never produced the Freedman texts.

Some of the Reddit subs are talking about this change of counsel development (and other possibly unreliable murmurs from the Without a Crystal Ball person) that something big is coming from Freedman next week, but I don't know. Something new in the Amended Complaint? Or something else?

(I saw Freedman on Meghyn Kelly 8 days ago saying he had four claims still and not two -- I think that was last Thursday or Friday so I'm not sure whether he's worked it out yet.)

[Anonymous]

Lively also filed a Reply brief in the Jed Wallace Texas case, claiming the Texas court doesn't have jurisdiction on her, and also that the complaint fails to state a viable claim for defamation against her, for basically the same reasons that Liman dismissed in NY. Haven't read this.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txwd.1172823305/gov.uscourts.txwd.1172823305.31.1.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does Vituscka need to sub? I thought the MTC against him was either withdrawn or mooted.

It's not really clear to me. Vituscka had previously offered to produce all his texts with Freedman in exchange for being out, and then Liman issued his decision which made everything about Sloane moot as claims against her were dismissed. I assume Vituscka never produced the Freedman texts.

Some of the Reddit subs are talking about this change of counsel development (and other possibly unreliable murmurs from the Without a Crystal Ball person) that something big is coming from Freedman next week, but I don't know. Something new in the Amended Complaint? Or something else?

(I saw Freedman on Meghyn Kelly 8 days ago saying he had four claims still and not two -- I think that was last Thursday or Friday so I'm not sure whether he's worked it out yet.)

I'm the PP - thinking about it more, there's also that pending motion to quash regarding Freedman's law firms contacts with journalists, so that may bring Vituscka back in, but it does seem weird that he'd change counsel now.