Lively/Baldoni Lawsuit Part 2

[Anonymous]

So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

There’s an inherent flaw in your question - you’re assuming the negative information did not already “vilify” the subject in question.

Blake has no one to blame but herself for several poor choices and she’s been criticized for them before by others and also now.

No one from Wayfarer’s side was blasting her for the weird wardrobe choices when early filming shots started going around social media. That was organic commentary.

She got blowback for her wedding and her Preserve lifestyle brand. That had nothing to do with Wayfarer.

A more appropriate question would be to ask what liability, if any, does a party have in promoting or sharing information that is already public, memorialized, or perceived as negative?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

There’s an inherent flaw in your question - you’re assuming the negative information did not already “vilify” the subject in question.

Blake has no one to blame but herself for several poor choices and she’s been criticized for them before by others and also now.

No one from Wayfarer’s side was blasting her for the weird wardrobe choices when early filming shots started going around social media. That was organic commentary.

She got blowback for her wedding and her Preserve lifestyle brand. That had nothing to do with Wayfarer.

A more appropriate question would be to ask what liability, if any, does a party have in promoting or sharing information that is already public, memorialized, or perceived as negative?

I didn’t ask what if what I described in my PP was what happened here. I asked what term one would use to describe those actions. Because the starting point is that a swear campaign requires spreading false information. So what is the term for what I described?

If you don’t want to answer that, then can you provide a term for the actions described in paragraphs 29-36 of Lively’s amended complaint.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

You don’t hire a crisis P.R. firm to attack another person, you hire them to defend yourself. This is presumably also why Blake hired Nick Shapiro after her lawsuit backfired on the pr front.

In any case, it’s Blake and her lawyers who keep calling it a smear campaign — even The NY Times article had smear in the title.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

You don’t hire a crisis P.R. firm to attack another person, you hire them to defend yourself. This is presumably also why Blake hired Nick Shapiro after her lawsuit backfired on the pr front.

In any case, it’s Blake and her lawyers who keep calling it a smear campaign — even The NY Times article had smear in the title.

But the description of what TAG proposed to do for Wayfarer specifically outlined wats in which they would attack Lively, including re-circulating rumors of supposed conflicts with former cast mates, tying her to to perceived "fake feminism" of her friend Taylor Swift, etc. The document also includes ways in which they would affirmatively defend Baldoni, but a significant portion of the document was focused on discussing ways to discredit Lively by hindering her reputation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

There’s an inherent flaw in your question - you’re assuming the negative information did not already “vilify” the subject in question.

Blake has no one to blame but herself for several poor choices and she’s been criticized for them before by others and also now.

No one from Wayfarer’s side was blasting her for the weird wardrobe choices when early filming shots started going around social media. That was organic commentary.

She got blowback for her wedding and her Preserve lifestyle brand. That had nothing to do with Wayfarer.

A more appropriate question would be to ask what liability, if any, does a party have in promoting or sharing information that is already public, memorialized, or perceived as negative?

I didn’t ask what if what I described in my PP was what happened here. I asked what term one would use to describe those actions. Because the starting point is that a swear campaign requires spreading false information. So what is the term for what I described?

If you don’t want to answer that, then can you provide a term for the actions described in paragraphs 29-36 of Lively’s amended complaint.

They mounted a PR response with a focus to defend Justin.

As I said before, negative perceptions of Blake already existed. Did Wayfarer exploit those perceptions? Maybe they did - I haven’t seen evidence beyond an initial proposal but they didn’t create the sentiments. You called it vilification but again those perceptions and sentiments were already in play on socials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

You don’t hire a crisis P.R. firm to attack another person, you hire them to defend yourself. This is presumably also why Blake hired Nick Shapiro after her lawsuit backfired on the pr front.

In any case, it’s Blake and her lawyers who keep calling it a smear campaign — even The NY Times article had smear in the title.

But the description of what TAG proposed to do for Wayfarer specifically outlined wats in which they would attack Lively, including re-circulating rumors of supposed conflicts with former cast mates, tying her to to perceived "fake feminism" of her friend Taylor Swift, etc. The document also includes ways in which they would affirmatively defend Baldoni, but a significant portion of the document was focused on discussing ways to discredit Lively by hindering her reputation.

That is only based on discussion of a proposed plan - there’s been no evidence presented yet that it was enacted or that portions of the proposed plan regarding Lively were carried out as initially discussed.

[Anonymous]

What is interesting is that Leslie Sloan was running all over town telling every reporter who would listen that the cast did not get along with Justin. That was blatantly not true. Blake and it looks like Jenny did not seem to get along with Justin.

He had no problem with any of the three main male cast members and Isabel when filming. Ironically, the only problem Isabel had with him was when his team was chasing her down for a subpoena, no doubt to verify that they got along well during the making of the film.

So it would make sense that Justin would want to get in peoples minds that it’s Blake who has never once gotten along with a cast in her 20 years of acting.

Is the way he did that illegal? I have no idea and I’ll leave that to the courts to decide - that certainly seems like it wasn’t retaliation. It was more defense- it certainly sounds like if it was Blake‘s team has no proof and they really should’ve gotten some proof before running to the New York Times - but ridiculous to think that Blake didn’t cause all of this.

She’s the one who made this a PR issue. She had only filed a complaint before the New York Times article. It didn’t make it into a lawsuit until after when Justin forced her hand with his website and now it’s too late to go back for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

You don’t hire a crisis P.R. firm to attack another person, you hire them to defend yourself. This is presumably also why Blake hired Nick Shapiro after her lawsuit backfired on the pr front.

In any case, it’s Blake and her lawyers who keep calling it a smear campaign — even The NY Times article had smear in the title.

But the description of what TAG proposed to do for Wayfarer specifically outlined wats in which they would attack Lively, including re-circulating rumors of supposed conflicts with former cast mates, tying her to to perceived "fake feminism" of her friend Taylor Swift, etc. The document also includes ways in which they would affirmatively defend Baldoni, but a significant portion of the document was focused on discussing ways to discredit Lively by hindering her reputation.

That is only based on discussion of a proposed plan - there’s been no evidence presented yet that it was enacted or that portions of the proposed plan regarding Lively were carried out as initially discussed.

So what term would you use to describe the plan outlined in Exhibit D of the complaint and as described in paragraphs 29-36 of the amended complaint. And evidence of what happened will be presented at trial. I am just asking for a term. There must be one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is interesting is that Leslie Sloan was running all over town telling every reporter who would listen that the cast did not get along with Justin. That was blatantly not true. Blake and it looks like Jenny did not seem to get along with Justin.

He had no problem with any of the three main male cast members and Isabel when filming. Ironically, the only problem Isabel had with him was when his team was chasing her down for a subpoena, no doubt to verify that they got along well during the making of the film.

So it would make sense that Justin would want to get in peoples minds that it’s Blake who has never once gotten along with a cast in her 20 years of acting.

Is the way he did that illegal? I have no idea and I’ll leave that to the courts to decide - that certainly seems like it wasn’t retaliation. It was more defense- it certainly sounds like if it was Blake‘s team has no proof and they really should’ve gotten some proof before running to the New York Times - but ridiculous to think that Blake didn’t cause all of this.

She’s the one who made this a PR issue. She had only filed a complaint before the New York Times article. It didn’t make it into a lawsuit until after when Justin forced her hand with his website and now it’s too late to go back for her.

If you have to defend yourself from someone bad mouthing you for sexually harassing them, then it seems like you might be in trouble.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is interesting is that Leslie Sloan was running all over town telling every reporter who would listen that the cast did not get along with Justin. That was blatantly not true. Blake and it looks like Jenny did not seem to get along with Justin.

He had no problem with any of the three main male cast members and Isabel when filming. Ironically, the only problem Isabel had with him was when his team was chasing her down for a subpoena, no doubt to verify that they got along well during the making of the film.

So it would make sense that Justin would want to get in peoples minds that it’s Blake who has never once gotten along with a cast in her 20 years of acting.

Is the way he did that illegal? I have no idea and I’ll leave that to the courts to decide - that certainly seems like it wasn’t retaliation. It was more defense- it certainly sounds like if it was Blake‘s team has no proof and they really should’ve gotten some proof before running to the New York Times - but ridiculous to think that Blake didn’t cause all of this.

She’s the one who made this a PR issue. She had only filed a complaint before the New York Times article. It didn’t make it into a lawsuit until after when Justin forced her hand with his website and now it’s too late to go back for her.

We don't actually know what is true or not. Remember we were told that Jenny's only issue on set was with Heath and the motherhood comment, and now we are learning that Jenny had repeated issues with Justin including some that were similar to Blake's (they both objected to him calling them "sexy" at different points, Jenny felt he violated boundaries by recording their meeting etc.).

Yes, Isabel sent that nice note of thanks to Justin but I don't think you can assume those were her true thoughts. I've been really nice to lots of bad bosses because if they can influence your ability to get your next job, you suck it up and say "thanks, this was so great, you've been wonderful." That's just life. I'd be interested to hear from her directly.

Same with the men on set.

I am genuinely open minded on this. Maybe everyone else had a good experience and Blake, Jenny, and apparently Alex Saks were outliers. Or maybe everyone was gritting their teeth through the entire production and Baldoni and Heath are too full of themselves to tell the difference between people who are genuinely happy on set versus people who are deferring to them because they are the bosses and people don't want to be fired. Other than Blake, Jenny, and Hasan, most of this cast was not well known at all when they were filming and still pretty early in their career and would be unlikely to make it known that they found the director or producer awful.

Also, remember those "HR reports" that came out months and months ago that people speculated were drawn up by Sony HR to document complaints from Blake, Jenny, and Isabel? But then we all thought they were fake because Jenny's especially didn't match up with what we thought we knew about her issues? But now with this new info about her complaints I think maybe that document matched up pretty well. Which makes me wonder if the Isabel one, which was actually the worst one, might also have been true.

A lot of open questions still on this case. I think we know very little of what would actually be presented at trial at this point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

You don’t hire a crisis P.R. firm to attack another person, you hire them to defend yourself. This is presumably also why Blake hired Nick Shapiro after her lawsuit backfired on the pr front.

In any case, it’s Blake and her lawyers who keep calling it a smear campaign — even The NY Times article had smear in the title.

But the description of what TAG proposed to do for Wayfarer specifically outlined wats in which they would attack Lively, including re-circulating rumors of supposed conflicts with former cast mates, tying her to to perceived "fake feminism" of her friend Taylor Swift, etc. The document also includes ways in which they would affirmatively defend Baldoni, but a significant portion of the document was focused on discussing ways to discredit Lively by hindering her reputation.

That is only based on discussion of a proposed plan - there’s been no evidence presented yet that it was enacted or that portions of the proposed plan regarding Lively were carried out as initially discussed.

So what term would you use to describe the plan outlined in Exhibit D of the complaint and as described in paragraphs 29-36 of the amended complaint. And evidence of what happened will be presented at trial. I am just asking for a term. There must be one.

If you want a term I’d still use a PR defense campaign.

And if Lively had clear proof she should have included it in her response to the MSJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

You don’t hire a crisis P.R. firm to attack another person, you hire them to defend yourself. This is presumably also why Blake hired Nick Shapiro after her lawsuit backfired on the pr front.

In any case, it’s Blake and her lawyers who keep calling it a smear campaign — even The NY Times article had smear in the title.

But the description of what TAG proposed to do for Wayfarer specifically outlined wats in which they would attack Lively, including re-circulating rumors of supposed conflicts with former cast mates, tying her to to perceived "fake feminism" of her friend Taylor Swift, etc. The document also includes ways in which they would affirmatively defend Baldoni, but a significant portion of the document was focused on discussing ways to discredit Lively by hindering her reputation.

That is only based on discussion of a proposed plan - there’s been no evidence presented yet that it was enacted or that portions of the proposed plan regarding Lively were carried out as initially discussed.

So what term would you use to describe the plan outlined in Exhibit D of the complaint and as described in paragraphs 29-36 of the amended complaint. And evidence of what happened will be presented at trial. I am just asking for a term. There must be one.

If you want a term I’d still use a PR defense campaign.

And if Lively had clear proof she should have included it in her response to the MSJ.

Clear to you? That's hardly relevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

You don’t hire a crisis P.R. firm to attack another person, you hire them to defend yourself. This is presumably also why Blake hired Nick Shapiro after her lawsuit backfired on the pr front.

In any case, it’s Blake and her lawyers who keep calling it a smear campaign — even The NY Times article had smear in the title.

But the description of what TAG proposed to do for Wayfarer specifically outlined wats in which they would attack Lively, including re-circulating rumors of supposed conflicts with former cast mates, tying her to to perceived "fake feminism" of her friend Taylor Swift, etc. The document also includes ways in which they would affirmatively defend Baldoni, but a significant portion of the document was focused on discussing ways to discredit Lively by hindering her reputation.

That is only based on discussion of a proposed plan - there’s been no evidence presented yet that it was enacted or that portions of the proposed plan regarding Lively were carried out as initially discussed.

So what term would you use to describe the plan outlined in Exhibit D of the complaint and as described in paragraphs 29-36 of the amended complaint. And evidence of what happened will be presented at trial. I am just asking for a term. There must be one.

If you want a term I’d still use a PR defense campaign.

And if Lively had clear proof she should have included it in her response to the MSJ.

To win on the MSJ she only has to prove there are genuine issues of fact. She doesn't have to lay out all her evidence, only enough to reach the conclusion that you need a fact finder to determine whether there is liability. She's pretty much already there, there is no incentive for her to disclose more than that at this stage.

The nature of this case was always destined for either settlement or trial. It comes down to individual perceptions of whether the activities alleged (1) happened as described and (2) meet the legal definition of SH or retaliation. Those are jury issues. The MSJ never had much of a shot as a result. They might get the issues for trial limited a bit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what term should be used for hiring a crisis PR firm to promote negative information about a person through social media in order to vilify them?

You don’t hire a crisis P.R. firm to attack another person, you hire them to defend yourself. This is presumably also why Blake hired Nick Shapiro after her lawsuit backfired on the pr front.

In any case, it’s Blake and her lawyers who keep calling it a smear campaign — even The NY Times article had smear in the title.

But the description of what TAG proposed to do for Wayfarer specifically outlined wats in which they would attack Lively, including re-circulating rumors of supposed conflicts with former cast mates, tying her to to perceived "fake feminism" of her friend Taylor Swift, etc. The document also includes ways in which they would affirmatively defend Baldoni, but a significant portion of the document was focused on discussing ways to discredit Lively by hindering her reputation.

That is only based on discussion of a proposed plan - there’s been no evidence presented yet that it was enacted or that portions of the proposed plan regarding Lively were carried out as initially discussed.

So what term would you use to describe the plan outlined in Exhibit D of the complaint and as described in paragraphs 29-36 of the amended complaint. And evidence of what happened will be presented at trial. I am just asking for a term. There must be one.

What do you call the arrangement Blake has with Nick Shapiro for social media services?