That’s not actually true. When you claim damages, one of the questions legally is did you do anything to minimize those damages. Sony said she should apologize. Heath put in writing that she should talk more about DV. Kroger said they were waiting to see what she was going to do to assuage concerns of her audience (they were a vendor of her liquor brand). So no, I don’t like Lively. I think she’s a racist among many other things. And still her failure to do anything to repair the bad PR will absolutely come in at trial. The plaintiff has that burden. |
If they have evidence showing Wafarer, via TAG and Wallace, promoted and encouraged the stories about the baby bump interview or Blake placing her products at the premiere party, then it's not "all Blake." The baby bump interview was old and went insanely viral right around the time of the premiere. Likewise, the stories about Blake promoting products at the premiere saw huge uptake in the days around the premiere, after Wayfarer hired TAG/Wallace. Blake will argue at trial that the impact on her brands was not "all Blake" but pushed and promoted by the people Wayfarer hired to "bury" her. This is the whole case. Yes, the defense is "it was organic." But this is complicated by text and email evidence showing TAG and Wallace assuring Wayfarer that it would all "look organic." A lot of this will come down to what experts are permitted to testify and about what, what expert reports are admitted into evidence. Blake's experts argue in favor of her narrative, Wayfarer's experts argue the other side. It is not that uncommon in a case like this, that concerns allegations of lost profits, for it to become a battle of the experts. That can make it a wildcard because you truly do not know what a jury of laypeople will do with that. We also don't know what the judge will decide regarding the experts -- I believe next week there is a hearing where the experts will testify and be subject to direct and cross examination, a sort of mini trial before the trial that will enable Liman to decide what is admissible or not. His decision is going to dictate the arguments each side can make in court to a great degree. We'll just have to wait and see. |
Yes, that will be part of the equation. But that's for the damages award, not for the juries decision on the merits of the case. Again, Lively is not on trial and the trial will not be about whether Lively is a good person or not. I have not agreed with every decision Liman has made, but one thing I will say is that it's clear he is tightly controlling this case. He is working very hard to ensure that the arguments placed before the jury are directly relevant to the questions the jury will answering, and nothing more. Both sides have already been greatly limited in what they can argue/discuss in court, and I suspect that will continue with the motions in limine, decisions on the experts, jury instructions, etc. This will not be some freewheeling opportunity to turn the trial into the sort of hit jobs Wayfarer has successfully sewn on Reddit and in the tabloid media. |
I’m not sure what point you’re making. Damages will be discussed in court. Wayfarer wants to bifurcate meaning they’re only litigated if lively wins. But if lively wins and gets no damages that’s still basically a loss. This will come in. |
This is really a reach. If someone does a really crappy interview and looks bad and it goes viral, they can’t just blame the internet. it’s Blake’s words. Again I will point out the difference here between what happened with Taylor Swift. People were boosting false content about her, twisting things like the jewelry and other things that she was putting out around her album were Nazi symbols and things. That was just patently false. But circulating various interviews of you sucking is not the same thing. And I’ll point out It was not just the baby bump video. It was videos of her promoting the movie which correct me if I’m wrong, but as the star of the movie she would want those circulating. there are multiple videos of her promoting her hairline, promoting her alcohol line, and being really sarcastic when people are asking her about domestic violence. None of that is Wayfares fault, all of that significantly harmed her reputation. I also have not seen one shred of proof that tag or Jed actually did anything. $90,000 is not a lot for three months of activity and we saw some of the reports that he did. He was monitoring things just like he said. there’s no evidence of a bunch of bots boosting content two years later - there’s no evidence of content creators being contacted by the team. Despite over 100 subpoenas. |
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It doesn’t seem like there is going to be a big winner or loser at the end if this trial.
Her reputation can’t be salvaged at this point. The only thing that might help is time and in a few years, maybe this will blow over but for the foreseeable future studios or consumers don’t care if it was WF or her, they just know that they don’t want much to do with her. I’ve seen a lot of the documents, her team is arguing that her businesses tanked has and studios won’t talk to her. I’m just not sure what a win will look like for her. Once the sexual harassment claims were tossed it just made her look like she made stuff up and lied. That ruined her reputation likely more than anything she did during the promotion of this film or anything WF might’ve done. |
Regarding the bolded, I get why people who don't understand the legal rulings might think this because of the online conversation, but if you understand the ruling, that's not at all what it says. Not even a little. In fact the opposite -- the court found that it was reasonable for Lively to believe she'd been SHed based on the facts of the case, and in no place did the court find she had made anything up or lied. |
If you think the general public or businesses that are thinking of disturbing her products are reading this nuance, you are sorely mistaken. The headlines are that this is a big loss and sexual harassment claims were thrown out. |
The Court has to assume everything she alleges is true. The summary judgment standard requires Court to interpret the evidence in the light most favorable to her. Even under that standard, the Court found half her sexual harassment claims were deficient as a matter of law. |
+1 after seeing the exhibits from Kroger and a few of her other vendors, it’s pretty clear these people are easily rattled. There’s a million beverages out there, why do business with a problematic one. I think the margin of error, especially for a new brand, is just incredibly small b/c there is so much competition. You also have to remember lively was having a bit of a bad run marketing Betty buzz b/c she had also made fun of Kate Middleton while promoting the brand. It seemed odd to me at first that Kroger and others would want to pump the brakes over a bad movie promo that I hadn’t even heard about, but then I realized they had just gotten through the Kate gate stuff, which was arguably a much bigger story. I had heard about the Kate stuff just like everyone else but I hadn’t heard about the iewum drama until the nyt article. I think wayfarer can also argue like look, her brand was already suffering from bad PR heading into August 2024. |
And yet that, which is more recent and involving a much bigger celebrity than Flaa, didn't make much of a dent. I'd certainly never heard about it but I did hear about the little bump video even though I don't generally follow celebrity news. To me that screams inorganic, especially if there are texts where they flag that for Jed and the big spike in views occurs immediately thereafter. I don't know if that's going to be enough causation for the jury. It's complicated by the fact that all the stuff they were "boosting" appears to have been truthful material, so at that point is the negative sentiment because the behavior was bad or because it was boosted, and to what extent did the boosting cause damages, etc. It's hard to quantify so it will be hard for her to get damages, but for me this example actually reinforces that this stuff was pumped out by Wayfarer around the premiere. |
No. Do you not understand that she immediately apologized for the Kate Middleton issue? Apologies go a long way. That’s been people’s biggest complaints, including the Sony executives. If she would just apologize, to the journalists, to the colleen Hoover fans she turned off by her marketing decisions, a lot of this would’ve gone away, but she just keeps on going. It is her actions that are causing the public to rehash mishaps from two years ago. |
I truly doubt an apology would have mattered but YMMV. |
Maybe not. But you can’t compare an incident where she apologized quickly and things died down to several issues that she allowed to keep festering. |
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The New York mag / Vulture has a new long piece on this case. I haven’t read it yet, but here’s a link to an archive (paywall workaround)
https://archive.ph/pQDab https://www.vulture.com/article/justin-baldoni-blake-lively-hollywood-feud-taylor-swift-ryan-reynolds.html |