Why is Blake Lively so overrated?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

Question for anyone who might know: would the initial response that baldoni’s attorney gave to the NYT absolve the NYT of sticking to the 12 pm deadline? In baldoni’s lawsuit, they included the 2:16 am response they gave to the NYT (which they say should have prompted followup/further investigation from the NYT but there was none), and that they believed that the NYT would stick to its 12 pm deadline but published early with no warning.

Lawyer here, PP is spot on. This was a big story with huge reputational consequences for the people they called out, and they did not provide adequate time to comment. The NYT shit the bed here. I can’t quite figure out how they were so sloppy…

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

They did though-- Baldoni had a heads up and request for comment, it was on the short side. However as my reporter husband told me, that's not unusual if you are asking a public person with lawyers and professional PR for comment (whereas if it was a private person you might give them more time to respond, depending on the nature of the allegations). None of the allegations were news to Baldoni-- he was already aware of the on-set harassment allegations and they were also aware of the complaint. So a few hours for comment in that scenario is apparently not unusual (per my DH).

I personally think the reporting was a little sloppy, especially given that they attached Twohey's name to it and took the me too angle. But not wrong. And they had confirmation of the texts veracity from the PR firm.

It would be different if it was shown the texts were falsified. They weren't. They were cherry picked. But Baldoni did in fact hire the firm to smear Lively -- in addition to the texts, there are documents that show the firm's goals and plans of attack. It's not like they went to press with nothing or lies. The coverage was just slanted toward Lively, which is not illegal or legally actionable.

They did go to press with lies, lies that would have been uncovered had they talked to him, or to the pr ladies.

Please point to the lies they published. And no, "Lively alleges XYZ" is not a lie of it is what she is alleging.

I’m not going through every line of the article with you, it’s lengthy. Her entire case is built on straws and even the tiniest but of investigation would have revealed that.

It isn't the NYT's job to litigate her whole case. She filed a complaint. They reported in it. They verified that the texts were real. That's it. You are expecting them to serve as judge and jury before publishing info about litigation involving noteworthy people. That's not how it works

You’re right in that the NYT has some defenses under a fair report privilege, but they really screwed up here by publishing those texts without the context and publishing a very one sided damning story about Baldoni and the PR people. Successful defamation lawsuits have been brought for much less than this. And the NYT’s claim to ‘defend this case blah blah’ means nothing. That’s PR blather. They will likely settle. You’ll see media outlets doing that a lot from now on, given the S Ct risk of NYT v Sullivan

Please name one successful defamation suit brought in the US by a famous person in which the allegation is that the news outlet failed to provide broader context for true and verified facts.

You can't. This does not happen. He will lose this case and it is unlikely to even go to trial.

I don't even like Blake Lively, I just think the bizarre wishful thinking of the Baldoni homeboys on this thread is bizarre. There is absolutely no way the NYT settles that case, and I believe it will be dismissed at SJ if not dropped before then.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

Question for anyone who might know: would the initial response that baldoni’s attorney gave to the NYT absolve the NYT of sticking to the 12 pm deadline? In baldoni’s lawsuit, they included the 2:16 am response they gave to the NYT (which they say should have prompted followup/further investigation from the NYT but there was none), and that they believed that the NYT would stick to its 12 pm deadline but published early with no warning.

Lawyer here, PP is spot on. This was a big story with huge reputational consequences for the people they called out, and they did not provide adequate time to comment. The NYT shit the bed here. I can’t quite figure out how they were so sloppy…

Except the NYT did tell Baldoni and received comments from his lawyer. So there was adequate time to comment. The comment was always going to be "we deny all the allegations" anyway. Adequate time to comment means enough time to review the basic outline of what will be printed and provide a comment. It does not mean "please take several days or a few weeks to craft a detailed defense."

The NYT has subsequently reported on Baldoni's own complaint, his suit against the NYT, and his attorney's various defenses in the press. He has been given plenty of space to make his case. And I guarantee you when the reached to to Lively's team regarding Baldoni's suit against her, they didn't give her days to get back to them. It was just a "do you have any comment about this" and maybe a few hours until publication.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

Question for anyone who might know: would the initial response that baldoni’s attorney gave to the NYT absolve the NYT of sticking to the 12 pm deadline? In baldoni’s lawsuit, they included the 2:16 am response they gave to the NYT (which they say should have prompted followup/further investigation from the NYT but there was none), and that they believed that the NYT would stick to its 12 pm deadline but published early with no warning.

Lawyer here, PP is spot on. This was a big story with huge reputational consequences for the people they called out, and they did not provide adequate time to comment. The NYT shit the bed here. I can’t quite figure out how they were so sloppy…

Except the NYT did tell Baldoni and received comments from his lawyer. So there was adequate time to comment. The comment was always going to be "we deny all the allegations" anyway. Adequate time to comment means enough time to review the basic outline of what will be printed and provide a comment. It does not mean "please take several days or a few weeks to craft a detailed defense."

The NYT has subsequently reported on Baldoni's own complaint, his suit against the NYT, and his attorney's various defenses in the press. He has been given plenty of space to make his case. And I guarantee you when the reached to to Lively's team regarding Baldoni's suit against her, they didn't give her days to get back to them. It was just a "do you have any comment about this" and maybe a few hours until publication.

I also want to add that the idea that Baldoni was blindsided by the NYTs piece is absurd. He'd been waiting for over 6 months for the other shoe to drop regarding the harassment claims Lively had made *during* the filming of the movie. He hired a PR firm in the summer of 2024 to get ahead of the story. He had already seen Lively's complaint in the CA proceedings and had retained an attorney. And you're telling me he was totally caught off guard but the NYT story and needed days to assemble a comment? Babe, no.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

They did though-- Baldoni had a heads up and request for comment, it was on the short side. However as my reporter husband told me, that's not unusual if you are asking a public person with lawyers and professional PR for comment (whereas if it was a private person you might give them more time to respond, depending on the nature of the allegations). None of the allegations were news to Baldoni-- he was already aware of the on-set harassment allegations and they were also aware of the complaint. So a few hours for comment in that scenario is apparently not unusual (per my DH).

I personally think the reporting was a little sloppy, especially given that they attached Twohey's name to it and took the me too angle. But not wrong. And they had confirmation of the texts veracity from the PR firm.

It would be different if it was shown the texts were falsified. They weren't. They were cherry picked. But Baldoni did in fact hire the firm to smear Lively -- in addition to the texts, there are documents that show the firm's goals and plans of attack. It's not like they went to press with nothing or lies. The coverage was just slanted toward Lively, which is not illegal or legally actionable.

They did go to press with lies, lies that would have been uncovered had they talked to him, or to the pr ladies.

Please point to the lies they published. And no, "Lively alleges XYZ" is not a lie of it is what she is alleging.

I’m not going through every line of the article with you, it’s lengthy. Her entire case is built on straws and even the tiniest but of investigation would have revealed that.

It isn't the NYT's job to litigate her whole case. She filed a complaint. They reported in it. They verified that the texts were real. That's it. You are expecting them to serve as judge and jury before publishing info about litigation involving noteworthy people. That's not how it works

You’re right in that the NYT has some defenses under a fair report privilege, but they really screwed up here by publishing those texts without the context and publishing a very one sided damning story about Baldoni and the PR people. Successful defamation lawsuits have been brought for much less than this. And the NYT’s claim to ‘defend this case blah blah’ means nothing. That’s PR blather. They will likely settle. You’ll see media outlets doing that a lot from now on, given the S Ct risk of NYT v Sullivan

Please name one successful defamation suit brought in the US by a famous person in which the allegation is that the news outlet failed to provide broader context for true and verified facts.

You can't. This does not happen. He will lose this case and it is unlikely to even go to trial.

I don't even like Blake Lively, I just think the bizarre wishful thinking of the Baldoni homeboys on this thread is bizarre. There is absolutely no way the NYT settles that case, and I believe it will be dismissed at SJ if not dropped before then.

Are you joking? Ever hear of Johnny Depp? Please look up that case and look at what the actual actionable words were. You’d likely be surprised by how tame they were (vetted by lawyers for sure). Libel by omission and implication cases occur all the time.

And fwiw the PR people are not necessarily public figures. Baldoni barely is himself. Most people didn’t know who he was before this drama. The determination of public to private figure is a legal one made by the judge, and the defamation standard for a public figure versus private is made by a jury of people (so negligence versus reckless disregard for the truth) and guess what? People think the media is sloppy, and assume they have tons of $ to pay out lawsuits.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, so just sit down.

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t think Blake was arguing that each occurrence on it’s on by itself was harassment. Harassment is usually a pattern and isolated incidents are not the problem but when there is repeated behaviour. Just like someone stopping by your house once isn’t a threat oblem but if they stop by 10 times making you very uncomfortable, you are still going to mention the first time. And even if they say their intention wasn’t to stalk you, he behaviour can still be a problem.

A toxic work environment isn’t one occurrence. It can be the cumulative effect of multiple things.

And just because this is a film set and they are acting doesn’t mean there are no rules or limits or expectations. It isn’t an anything goes work environment either.

But she is claiming sexual harassment. Not a toxic work environment or general harassment.

Toxic work environment is a subset of sexual harassment. Plus she's claiming that Baldoni tried to retaliate against her for raising employment-related concerns (both sexual harassment and more general issues), which is a standard employment claim.

I don't know where people got the idea that Lively's complaint alleged that she was sexually harassed one time by Baldoni in this one scene for which we have footage. This is like 1-2 paragraphs from a complaint that details pages and pages and pages of alleged harassment, contractual violations, and retaliation.

“toxic work environment” is not a subset of sexual harassment …

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

Question for anyone who might know: would the initial response that baldoni’s attorney gave to the NYT absolve the NYT of sticking to the 12 pm deadline? In baldoni’s lawsuit, they included the 2:16 am response they gave to the NYT (which they say should have prompted followup/further investigation from the NYT but there was none), and that they believed that the NYT would stick to its 12 pm deadline but published early with no warning.

Lawyer here, PP is spot on. This was a big story with huge reputational consequences for the people they called out, and they did not provide adequate time to comment. The NYT shit the bed here. I can’t quite figure out how they were so sloppy…

Except the NYT did tell Baldoni and received comments from his lawyer. So there was adequate time to comment. The comment was always going to be "we deny all the allegations" anyway. Adequate time to comment means enough time to review the basic outline of what will be printed and provide a comment. It does not mean "please take several days or a few weeks to craft a detailed defense."

The NYT has subsequently reported on Baldoni's own complaint, his suit against the NYT, and his attorney's various defenses in the press. He has been given plenty of space to make his case. And I guarantee you when the reached to to Lively's team regarding Baldoni's suit against her, they didn't give her days to get back to them. It was just a "do you have any comment about this" and maybe a few hours until publication.

Look, I get that you think you know how it works, but you don’t. You’ve clearly never been near a newsroom or publication. A few hours is not enough time for a story like that- and yes, subjects of damning stories are often given days to respond. Further, Baldonis strong denial should have made them pause and dig more for context. Which they didn’t. Baldoni and the PR people (arguably private figures) have a legit case here.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t think Blake was arguing that each occurrence on it’s on by itself was harassment. Harassment is usually a pattern and isolated incidents are not the problem but when there is repeated behaviour. Just like someone stopping by your house once isn’t a threat oblem but if they stop by 10 times making you very uncomfortable, you are still going to mention the first time. And even if they say their intention wasn’t to stalk you, he behaviour can still be a problem.

A toxic work environment isn’t one occurrence. It can be the cumulative effect of multiple things.

And just because this is a film set and they are acting doesn’t mean there are no rules or limits or expectations. It isn’t an anything goes work environment either.

But she is claiming sexual harassment. Not a toxic work environment or general harassment.

Toxic work environment is a subset of sexual harassment. Plus she's claiming that Baldoni tried to retaliate against her for raising employment-related concerns (both sexual harassment and more general issues), which is a standard employment claim.

I don't know where people got the idea that Lively's complaint alleged that she was sexually harassed one time by Baldoni in this one scene for which we have footage. This is like 1-2 paragraphs from a complaint that details pages and pages and pages of alleged harassment, contractual violations, and retaliation.

“toxic work environment” is not a subset of sexual harassment …

DP the two subsets of workplace sexual harassment are quid pro quo (ex. Conditioning a promotion in exchange for a sexual favor) which only needs to happen once to be actionable, and hostile (not toxic) work environment which requires a pervasive pattern of conduct.

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

They did though-- Baldoni had a heads up and request for comment, it was on the short side. However as my reporter husband told me, that's not unusual if you are asking a public person with lawyers and professional PR for comment (whereas if it was a private person you might give them more time to respond, depending on the nature of the allegations). None of the allegations were news to Baldoni-- he was already aware of the on-set harassment allegations and they were also aware of the complaint. So a few hours for comment in that scenario is apparently not unusual (per my DH).

I personally think the reporting was a little sloppy, especially given that they attached Twohey's name to it and took the me too angle. But not wrong. And they had confirmation of the texts veracity from the PR firm.

It would be different if it was shown the texts were falsified. They weren't. They were cherry picked. But Baldoni did in fact hire the firm to smear Lively -- in addition to the texts, there are documents that show the firm's goals and plans of attack. It's not like they went to press with nothing or lies. The coverage was just slanted toward Lively, which is not illegal or legally actionable.

They did go to press with lies, lies that would have been uncovered had they talked to him, or to the pr ladies.

Please point to the lies they published. And no, "Lively alleges XYZ" is not a lie of it is what she is alleging.

I’m not going through every line of the article with you, it’s lengthy. Her entire case is built on straws and even the tiniest but of investigation would have revealed that.

It isn't the NYT's job to litigate her whole case. She filed a complaint. They reported in it. They verified that the texts were real. That's it. You are expecting them to serve as judge and jury before publishing info about litigation involving noteworthy people. That's not how it works

You’re right in that the NYT has some defenses under a fair report privilege, but they really screwed up here by publishing those texts without the context and publishing a very one sided damning story about Baldoni and the PR people. Successful defamation lawsuits have been brought for much less than this. And the NYT’s claim to ‘defend this case blah blah’ means nothing. That’s PR blather. They will likely settle. You’ll see media outlets doing that a lot from now on, given the S Ct risk of NYT v Sullivan

Please name one successful defamation suit brought in the US by a famous person in which the allegation is that the news outlet failed to provide broader context for true and verified facts.

You can't. This does not happen. He will lose this case and it is unlikely to even go to trial.

I don't even like Blake Lively, I just think the bizarre wishful thinking of the Baldoni homeboys on this thread is bizarre. There is absolutely no way the NYT settles that case, and I believe it will be dismissed at SJ if not dropped before then.

Are you joking? Ever hear of Johnny Depp? Please look up that case and look at what the actual actionable words were. You’d likely be surprised by how tame they were (vetted by lawyers for sure). Libel by omission and implication cases occur all the time.

And fwiw the PR people are not necessarily public figures. Baldoni barely is himself. Most people didn’t know who he was before this drama. The determination of public to private figure is a legal one made by the judge, and the defamation standard for a public figure versus private is made by a jury of people (so negligence versus reckless disregard for the truth) and guess what? People think the media is sloppy, and assume they have tons of $ to pay out lawsuits.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, so just sit down.

Depp won his defamation case against Amber Heard for an op-ed she wrote. We are talking about Baldoni's case against the NYT, not Lively.

The PR people are not suing the NYT.

Baldoni is a public figure for purposes of a libel case. He is the co-star and director of a major motion picture. He was the co-star of a network television show that ran for several years. He is not a private person. This is not debatable and no court is going to rule that he is a private person for purposes of this lawsuit. No one.

I am already seated, thanks. I know exactly what I'm talking about, though.

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

They did though-- Baldoni had a heads up and request for comment, it was on the short side. However as my reporter husband told me, that's not unusual if you are asking a public person with lawyers and professional PR for comment (whereas if it was a private person you might give them more time to respond, depending on the nature of the allegations). None of the allegations were news to Baldoni-- he was already aware of the on-set harassment allegations and they were also aware of the complaint. So a few hours for comment in that scenario is apparently not unusual (per my DH).

I personally think the reporting was a little sloppy, especially given that they attached Twohey's name to it and took the me too angle. But not wrong. And they had confirmation of the texts veracity from the PR firm.

It would be different if it was shown the texts were falsified. They weren't. They were cherry picked. But Baldoni did in fact hire the firm to smear Lively -- in addition to the texts, there are documents that show the firm's goals and plans of attack. It's not like they went to press with nothing or lies. The coverage was just slanted toward Lively, which is not illegal or legally actionable.

They did go to press with lies, lies that would have been uncovered had they talked to him, or to the pr ladies.

Please point to the lies they published. And no, "Lively alleges XYZ" is not a lie of it is what she is alleging.

I’m not going through every line of the article with you, it’s lengthy. Her entire case is built on straws and even the tiniest but of investigation would have revealed that.

It isn't the NYT's job to litigate her whole case. She filed a complaint. They reported in it. They verified that the texts were real. That's it. You are expecting them to serve as judge and jury before publishing info about litigation involving noteworthy people. That's not how it works

You’re right in that the NYT has some defenses under a fair report privilege, but they really screwed up here by publishing those texts without the context and publishing a very one sided damning story about Baldoni and the PR people. Successful defamation lawsuits have been brought for much less than this. And the NYT’s claim to ‘defend this case blah blah’ means nothing. That’s PR blather. They will likely settle. You’ll see media outlets doing that a lot from now on, given the S Ct risk of NYT v Sullivan

Please name one successful defamation suit brought in the US by a famous person in which the allegation is that the news outlet failed to provide broader context for true and verified facts.

You can't. This does not happen. He will lose this case and it is unlikely to even go to trial.

I don't even like Blake Lively, I just think the bizarre wishful thinking of the Baldoni homeboys on this thread is bizarre. There is absolutely no way the NYT settles that case, and I believe it will be dismissed at SJ if not dropped before then.

Are you joking? Ever hear of Johnny Depp? Please look up that case and look at what the actual actionable words were. You’d likely be surprised by how tame they were (vetted by lawyers for sure). Libel by omission and implication cases occur all the time.

And fwiw the PR people are not necessarily public figures. Baldoni barely is himself. Most people didn’t know who he was before this drama. The determination of public to private figure is a legal one made by the judge, and the defamation standard for a public figure versus private is made by a jury of people (so negligence versus reckless disregard for the truth) and guess what? People think the media is sloppy, and assume they have tons of $ to pay out lawsuits.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, so just sit down.

Depp won his defamation case against Amber Heard for an op-ed she wrote. We are talking about Baldoni's case against the NYT, not Lively.

The PR people are not suing the NYT.

Baldoni is a public figure for purposes of a libel case. He is the co-star and director of a major motion picture. He was the co-star of a network television show that ran for several years. He is not a private person. This is not debatable and no court is going to rule that he is a private person for purposes of this lawsuit. No one.

I am already seated, thanks. I know exactly what I'm talking about, though.

I just looked it up. The PR people are plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the NYT.

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

Question for anyone who might know: would the initial response that baldoni’s attorney gave to the NYT absolve the NYT of sticking to the 12 pm deadline? In baldoni’s lawsuit, they included the 2:16 am response they gave to the NYT (which they say should have prompted followup/further investigation from the NYT but there was none), and that they believed that the NYT would stick to its 12 pm deadline but published early with no warning.

Lawyer here, PP is spot on. This was a big story with huge reputational consequences for the people they called out, and they did not provide adequate time to comment. The NYT shit the bed here. I can’t quite figure out how they were so sloppy…

Except the NYT did tell Baldoni and received comments from his lawyer. So there was adequate time to comment. The comment was always going to be "we deny all the allegations" anyway. Adequate time to comment means enough time to review the basic outline of what will be printed and provide a comment. It does not mean "please take several days or a few weeks to craft a detailed defense."

The NYT has subsequently reported on Baldoni's own complaint, his suit against the NYT, and his attorney's various defenses in the press. He has been given plenty of space to make his case. And I guarantee you when the reached to to Lively's team regarding Baldoni's suit against her, they didn't give her days to get back to them. It was just a "do you have any comment about this" and maybe a few hours until publication.

Look, I get that you think you know how it works, but you don’t. You’ve clearly never been near a newsroom or publication. A few hours is not enough time for a story like that- and yes, subjects of damning stories are often given days to respond. Further, Baldonis strong denial should have made them pause and dig more for context. Which they didn’t. Baldoni and the PR people (arguably private figures) have a legit case here.

I used to work for a major news agency and sometimes we only gave subjects less than an hour for comment. It would depend on the nature of the reporting. I can't think of a situation where someone would be given several days to respond to allegations, especially not when they would have been aware of the allegations before we reported on them, as was the case here. And everyone issues "strong denials." It's the standard response.

To my knowledge, the PR firm/employees are not a party to the NYT suit. It would be kind of funny for a PR person to sue a news organization for slanted reporting. Oh the irony!

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t think Blake was arguing that each occurrence on it’s on by itself was harassment. Harassment is usually a pattern and isolated incidents are not the problem but when there is repeated behaviour. Just like someone stopping by your house once isn’t a threat oblem but if they stop by 10 times making you very uncomfortable, you are still going to mention the first time. And even if they say their intention wasn’t to stalk you, he behaviour can still be a problem.

A toxic work environment isn’t one occurrence. It can be the cumulative effect of multiple things.

And just because this is a film set and they are acting doesn’t mean there are no rules or limits or expectations. It isn’t an anything goes work environment either.

But she is claiming sexual harassment. Not a toxic work environment or general harassment.

Toxic work environment is a subset of sexual harassment. Plus she's claiming that Baldoni tried to retaliate against her for raising employment-related concerns (both sexual harassment and more general issues), which is a standard employment claim.

I don't know where people got the idea that Lively's complaint alleged that she was sexually harassed one time by Baldoni in this one scene for which we have footage. This is like 1-2 paragraphs from a complaint that details pages and pages and pages of alleged harassment, contractual violations, and retaliation.

“toxic work environment” is not a subset of sexual harassment …

DP the two subsets of workplace sexual harassment are quid pro quo (ex. Conditioning a promotion in exchange for a sexual favor) which only needs to happen once to be actionable, and hostile (not toxic) work environment which requires a pervasive pattern of conduct.

+1 except one “severe” incident like a rape could be actionable.

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

They did though-- Baldoni had a heads up and request for comment, it was on the short side. However as my reporter husband told me, that's not unusual if you are asking a public person with lawyers and professional PR for comment (whereas if it was a private person you might give them more time to respond, depending on the nature of the allegations). None of the allegations were news to Baldoni-- he was already aware of the on-set harassment allegations and they were also aware of the complaint. So a few hours for comment in that scenario is apparently not unusual (per my DH).

I personally think the reporting was a little sloppy, especially given that they attached Twohey's name to it and took the me too angle. But not wrong. And they had confirmation of the texts veracity from the PR firm.

It would be different if it was shown the texts were falsified. They weren't. They were cherry picked. But Baldoni did in fact hire the firm to smear Lively -- in addition to the texts, there are documents that show the firm's goals and plans of attack. It's not like they went to press with nothing or lies. The coverage was just slanted toward Lively, which is not illegal or legally actionable.

They did go to press with lies, lies that would have been uncovered had they talked to him, or to the pr ladies.

Please point to the lies they published. And no, "Lively alleges XYZ" is not a lie of it is what she is alleging.

I’m not going through every line of the article with you, it’s lengthy. Her entire case is built on straws and even the tiniest but of investigation would have revealed that.

It isn't the NYT's job to litigate her whole case. She filed a complaint. They reported in it. They verified that the texts were real. That's it. You are expecting them to serve as judge and jury before publishing info about litigation involving noteworthy people. That's not how it works

You’re right in that the NYT has some defenses under a fair report privilege, but they really screwed up here by publishing those texts without the context and publishing a very one sided damning story about Baldoni and the PR people. Successful defamation lawsuits have been brought for much less than this. And the NYT’s claim to ‘defend this case blah blah’ means nothing. That’s PR blather. They will likely settle. You’ll see media outlets doing that a lot from now on, given the S Ct risk of NYT v Sullivan

Please name one successful defamation suit brought in the US by a famous person in which the allegation is that the news outlet failed to provide broader context for true and verified facts.

You can't. This does not happen. He will lose this case and it is unlikely to even go to trial.

I don't even like Blake Lively, I just think the bizarre wishful thinking of the Baldoni homeboys on this thread is bizarre. There is absolutely no way the NYT settles that case, and I believe it will be dismissed at SJ if not dropped before then.

Are you joking? Ever hear of Johnny Depp? Please look up that case and look at what the actual actionable words were. You’d likely be surprised by how tame they were (vetted by lawyers for sure). Libel by omission and implication cases occur all the time.

And fwiw the PR people are not necessarily public figures. Baldoni barely is himself. Most people didn’t know who he was before this drama. The determination of public to private figure is a legal one made by the judge, and the defamation standard for a public figure versus private is made by a jury of people (so negligence versus reckless disregard for the truth) and guess what? People think the media is sloppy, and assume they have tons of $ to pay out lawsuits.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, so just sit down.

Depp won his defamation case against Amber Heard for an op-ed she wrote. We are talking about Baldoni's case against the NYT, not Lively.

The PR people are not suing the NYT.

Baldoni is a public figure for purposes of a libel case. He is the co-star and director of a major motion picture. He was the co-star of a network television show that ran for several years. He is not a private person. This is not debatable and no court is going to rule that he is a private person for purposes of this lawsuit. No one.

I am already seated, thanks. I know exactly what I'm talking about, though.

I just looked it up. The PR people are plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the NYT.

Then the lower standard for private people will be applied to their claims. But Baldoni's libel claims will be separate and he'll be treated as a public figure. He won't get to sneak in under the umbrella of Nathan's and Abel's privacy. It doesn't work that way.

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Anonymous wrote:Any chance a judge approves the gag order? Can anyone here with legal insight provide some clarity?

The are asking for both a protective order (that's what people are referring to as the "gag order") and a hearing to discuss appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward. I can't find a copy of their motion online though so I'm not sure exactly what the are asking the protective order to cover.

They'll get the hearing, that's an easy one and could be rolled into other preliminary hearings the judge might schedule as well. I would expect the judge at the hearing to lecture attorneys on both sides regarding communications to the press, not just Baldoni's lawyers.

I do think there are some things that Baldoni's lawyer has either released or is proposing releasing that the court would consider issuing a PO against. For instance I think it's highly likely the judge could issue a PO preventing Baldoni from releasing footage from the birth scene, where even if you go by Baldoni's complaint, the most Lively was wearing was a pair of underwear briefs on the bottom, and her legs were up in stirrups. That would be an easy one. I am less sure about how the judge would treat other requests for nondisclosure, of stuff like texts/emails between the parties. A lot of it is already in the complaints, I don't know how much else there even is. The judge will have to weight the potentially prejudicial or damaging impact of any potential disclosure against Baldoni's right to defend himself in the court of public opinion. And I don't know if Lively is asking for a blanket PO (unlikely to get) or something more targeted, which is more likely to be successful.

I know the press has a lot of protections, but do you think his case against the New York Times has legitimacy? They left out some key texts. e.g. Two people on his team said there was so much ammo against Justin when it came to the sexual harassment claims, but they left out a part where they both said that those accusations weren't true.

I would be pretty surprised if his NYT suit makes it past summary judgment. The only reservation I have is that recent big settlement by ABC news with Trump, which also surprised me but in retrospect I think they did it to avoid litigation that could go to the Supreme Court and potentially overturn important precedent (Sullivan). So that gives me pause and makes me wonder if we are just in a different era. However, that was Trump as plaintiff and the odds of it going to the SC are high and he appointed half the justices. I don't think Baldoni v. NYT is going that route.

In order to prove defamation, he has to prove "actual malice." He has to prove that they published something that was intentionally misleading with the specific goal of hurting Baldoni. I think this will be virtually impossible for a bunch of reasons -- the piece actually has multiple bylines and it would be hard to prove they collaborated to take Baldoni down, the NYT's fact checking process is pretty rigorous and they will have documentation of everything, and his argument is basically that they failed to provide full context to the allegation but they will simply argue that they reported on Lively's complaint and the allegations they had at the time, and then later reported on Baldoni's complaint and his counter-allegations. News orgs are not required to hold stories until every bit of information is available before reporting.

The NYT has also said they plan to vigorously defend in the case, so that weighs against a potential settlement. I don't think Baldoni has much of a case on the law here. I do wonder what a decisive loss in the NYT case does with regards to his battle against Lively and Reynolds. It won't help, but I don't know how much it will hurt.

Am I understanding correctly that you’re saying if the texts provided to them were edited/incomplete, then they could be shielded from liability by relying on those texts? In other words, they didn’t need to investigate whether those texts were complete or edited before reporting their story? If so, that’s kind of unfortunate because they essentially amplified edited/incomplete texts to present a completely different story than the unedited/complete texts would show! I feel like the due diligence standards should be higher for New York Times journalists…

If they verified the texts were real, no, I don't think they are legally required to ensure they have every single text in a text chain.

Also, even though some of the meaning of specific texts was changed when taken out of context, the broad outlines of what they reported was true -- Baldoni hired a PR firm to plant stories about Lively online in order to undermine her reputation in case she came forward with details about the alleged harassment on set. The context that has since been provided doesn't challenge any of that. It just puts some of the comments in the texts into gentler framing.

I think it's going to be near impossible for Baldoni to prove the NYT intentionally mislead the public with this story because he did actually do what he is accused of doing in terms of the PR story -- he hired the firm specifically to turn public sentiment against Lively. Sure, he'll argue he did that because the harassment allegations are false and he was getting ahead of that story. That's fine and the NYT has reported on his argument as well. But those texts were not made up and the story itself is still accurate even if additional context has come to light.

He basically has no case here.

Failing to provide context isn't libel against anyone.

Failing to provide context against a public figure will be laughed out of court as libel.

PP here and this is a much more succinct version, yes. I don't think he'd have a case even if he were a public person, though, because they didn't print anything untrue.

I think that is not enitekh correct, they altered one of the texts to take out emojis that indicated it was satire.

Meant to say they altered at least one of the texts in a way that changed its meaning, that is different than just failing to print entire text chain.

I have never thought of the upside down smiley face as meaning I didn't mean anything I just said or satire. I googled online for descriptions of it (from a time pre this saga) and it seems that there are about 100 different intended meanings of the emoji. Many say they use it to indicate resignation or whatever or dry humour etc. I am not sure one can assume the intention at the time the emoji was sent was that it means the text that was sent was satire.

If the reporter was unsure what it meant, perhaps she should have asked the person who texted it. You know, practice journalism.

I'm a journalist, and I absolutely think the NY times is in trouble. For one thing, if you are making claims about someone, you need to tell them and give them enough time to make a response before publishing. They failed to do that.

They did though-- Baldoni had a heads up and request for comment, it was on the short side. However as my reporter husband told me, that's not unusual if you are asking a public person with lawyers and professional PR for comment (whereas if it was a private person you might give them more time to respond, depending on the nature of the allegations). None of the allegations were news to Baldoni-- he was already aware of the on-set harassment allegations and they were also aware of the complaint. So a few hours for comment in that scenario is apparently not unusual (per my DH).

I personally think the reporting was a little sloppy, especially given that they attached Twohey's name to it and took the me too angle. But not wrong. And they had confirmation of the texts veracity from the PR firm.

It would be different if it was shown the texts were falsified. They weren't. They were cherry picked. But Baldoni did in fact hire the firm to smear Lively -- in addition to the texts, there are documents that show the firm's goals and plans of attack. It's not like they went to press with nothing or lies. The coverage was just slanted toward Lively, which is not illegal or legally actionable.

They did go to press with lies, lies that would have been uncovered had they talked to him, or to the pr ladies.

Please point to the lies they published. And no, "Lively alleges XYZ" is not a lie of it is what she is alleging.

I’m not going through every line of the article with you, it’s lengthy. Her entire case is built on straws and even the tiniest but of investigation would have revealed that.

It isn't the NYT's job to litigate her whole case. She filed a complaint. They reported in it. They verified that the texts were real. That's it. You are expecting them to serve as judge and jury before publishing info about litigation involving noteworthy people. That's not how it works

You’re right in that the NYT has some defenses under a fair report privilege, but they really screwed up here by publishing those texts without the context and publishing a very one sided damning story about Baldoni and the PR people. Successful defamation lawsuits have been brought for much less than this. And the NYT’s claim to ‘defend this case blah blah’ means nothing. That’s PR blather. They will likely settle. You’ll see media outlets doing that a lot from now on, given the S Ct risk of NYT v Sullivan

Please name one successful defamation suit brought in the US by a famous person in which the allegation is that the news outlet failed to provide broader context for true and verified facts.

You can't. This does not happen. He will lose this case and it is unlikely to even go to trial.

I don't even like Blake Lively, I just think the bizarre wishful thinking of the Baldoni homeboys on this thread is bizarre. There is absolutely no way the NYT settles that case, and I believe it will be dismissed at SJ if not dropped before then.

Are you joking? Ever hear of Johnny Depp? Please look up that case and look at what the actual actionable words were. You’d likely be surprised by how tame they were (vetted by lawyers for sure). Libel by omission and implication cases occur all the time.

And fwiw the PR people are not necessarily public figures. Baldoni barely is himself. Most people didn’t know who he was before this drama. The determination of public to private figure is a legal one made by the judge, and the defamation standard for a public figure versus private is made by a jury of people (so negligence versus reckless disregard for the truth) and guess what? People think the media is sloppy, and assume they have tons of $ to pay out lawsuits.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, so just sit down.

Depp won his defamation case against Amber Heard for an op-ed she wrote. We are talking about Baldoni's case against the NYT, not Lively.

The PR people are not suing the NYT.

Baldoni is a public figure for purposes of a libel case. He is the co-star and director of a major motion picture. He was the co-star of a network television show that ran for several years. He is not a private person. This is not debatable and no court is going to rule that he is a private person for purposes of this lawsuit. No one.

I am already seated, thanks. I know exactly what I'm talking about, though.

Look, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Look up Heards op ed. Look what the words were. I think you’ll be surprised. He’s not even named. Depp made a strategic move to sue her. But he could have sued the publication too. He in fact did sue publications in Europe.

Baldoni may be a public figure, but that’s a judges decision. You’d be surprised how judges can rule on these matters. People who you’d think would be private figures are deemed public, and vice versa. And judges decide that issue. The PR people? It depends.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t think Blake was arguing that each occurrence on it’s on by itself was harassment. Harassment is usually a pattern and isolated incidents are not the problem but when there is repeated behaviour. Just like someone stopping by your house once isn’t a threat oblem but if they stop by 10 times making you very uncomfortable, you are still going to mention the first time. And even if they say their intention wasn’t to stalk you, he behaviour can still be a problem.

A toxic work environment isn’t one occurrence. It can be the cumulative effect of multiple things.

And just because this is a film set and they are acting doesn’t mean there are no rules or limits or expectations. It isn’t an anything goes work environment either.

But she is claiming sexual harassment. Not a toxic work environment or general harassment.

Toxic work environment is a subset of sexual harassment. Plus she's claiming that Baldoni tried to retaliate against her for raising employment-related concerns (both sexual harassment and more general issues), which is a standard employment claim.

I don't know where people got the idea that Lively's complaint alleged that she was sexually harassed one time by Baldoni in this one scene for which we have footage. This is like 1-2 paragraphs from a complaint that details pages and pages and pages of alleged harassment, contractual violations, and retaliation.

“toxic work environment” is not a subset of sexual harassment …

DP the two subsets of workplace sexual harassment are quid pro quo (ex. Conditioning a promotion in exchange for a sexual favor) which only needs to happen once to be actionable, and hostile (not toxic) work environment which requires a pervasive pattern of conduct.

PP here and yes I meant hostile work environment. I accidentally quoted the prior poster who coined the phrase "toxic work environment" which is not a legal term.