Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It’s not even really a “setback.” The jr associates here are acting like getting your discovery narrowed by the judge is some kind of disaster. The whole point was to freak out the other side with a broad request.

I don't think it's a disaster, but I think their subpoena was pointless and time wasting. I don't think it freaked the other side out at all. At most I can see the strategy was to ask for a very broad subpoena that any defendant would absolutely move to quash so they could get in a few silly jabs in the press about Justin and Wayfarer not wanting to show the "receipts" which is just not a strategy I respect. The whole point was they weren't asking for "the receipts" but a bunch of irrelevant, private information.

And yet there is nothing to indicate implementation of any plan ever! The most controversial language was Nathan and Abel agreeing that they were astonished that they didn’t have to act against Lively because of her own goals, and they agreed it was “sad” but “don’t like be a c-.”

"We are crushing on it reddit thanks to Jed" was a pretty good indicator. Baldoni quizzing them about bots and them saying that's not us is a good indicator that there was a paid astroturfing plan in motion that he didn't want to look obvious. I can't buy that they had this whole plan developed, things happened according to the plan, they discussed how they were crushing it, but then claim it actually all was organic. Perhaps the jury will disagree with me, but I think there's enough there for her claims to survive to trial. I'm not saying Lively is likeable. Indeed she had issues and part of their plan was leveraging her own past, real, issues and interviews to destroy her credibility in case her SH complaints should come to life.

Wondering if someone could explain astroturfing and what is legal and illegal? There was just an article that apparently Blake has purchased hundreds of thousands of fake Instagram followers to stop her very obvious drop in followers. I imagine that’s perfectly legal, but it is definitely deceptive to the public.

Is anything Jed is doing legal? Or we think everything is illegal?

PP. To my understanding astroturfing isn't illegal. I would argue it's protected under the first amendment. It's just speech saying someone sucks. You're just having someone else say it instead of saying it directly. It is deceptive and unethical. In order for it to be unlawful and actionable, IMO you need something more.

Astroturfing could be unlawful if it includes defamation, the planting of false statements of fact. As long as this campaign stuck to opinions and true facts, that's not unlawful. If they asked Flaa, or even paid her, to post the interview, since the interview is real, that wouldn't be unlawful, nor would it be unlawful, IMO, to hire people to upvote it on reddit and post comments that Blake sounds like a B.

Tortious interference in a business could be another one. Say you own a restaurant and your competitor hires people to post Yelp opinions that say your food sucks and the staff is rude. Those are opinions, but this is probably unlawful and you could sue.

And then there's her claim of retaliation, which is pretty novel and interesting. The astroturfing itself is not illegal, but it becomes illegal if she can prove it was done as retaliation for reporting sexual harassment. Kind of like firing a person or demoting a person or changing their work schedule is not illegal, but it becomes so when it's done in retaliation. Without this component she wouldn't have much of a case at all. If they had just had the dispute over her taking over the film, and she wanted to ice him out of the premiere, and then he hired crisis PR to plant stories saying she's awful, I don't believe she'd have a cause of action.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi can someone explain why she doesn't just limit what she's asking for? By keeping the scope within the context of this situation she can still learn about the different pr players they reached too. I don't get why she's making it so complicated

Her argument would be that due to the anonymous nature of the smear campaign, it's not possible to identify all the parties and phone numbers they communicated with, therefore she wants logs of all calls made during that time period (to somehow ascertain who these parties were, and I'm not sure how one would even do that). The judge ruled that this was overbroad and disproportionate as it would also capture all their personal contacts and doctors, etc (something I have argued in this thread as well).

The judge said she should use other tools to try to ascertain who these parties are (for example, she can serve interrogatories asking them for information, contact lists, and phone numbers about other parties who may have information, and then subpoena phone records of communications between the Wayfarer parties and those parties).

Her argument re the smear campaign is predicated on the delusion that prior to filming with Baldoni, Lively was a popular figure across pop culture commentary sites, and that she moved product. She’s been reviled for years for racial insensitivity at best, and her best-known business foray failed and was broadly mocked

She can’t get what she wants both due to and absent that specific delusion. It is what it is.

Not quite. The argument you are referencing would go to damages, but doesn't really impact her ability to make her underlying case. Her argument is that she was sexually harassed, complained about it, and that Wayfarer retaliated against her for complaining via a PR campaign. None of that is predicated on her being popular or "moving product." That's just a standard harassment/retaliation claim under employment law. And if she can prove it to a fact-finder (jury or judge) then she will win regardless of what her popularity level was prior to the whole thing. She could be widely loathed and still win if she can prove they retaliated against her for her SH claims.

Now, in awarding damages, they'd have to determine what financial losses she incurred as a result of the retaliation. And that's where what you are talking about would come in. If Wayfarer could prove she was widely disliked even before the smear campaign and that their actions did little or nothing to damage her already tarnished reputation, they could greatly reduce the potential damages in the event of a loss.

It’s interesting. From what I recall, everything went south with the “congrats on your little bump” video. I imagined Flaa posted that due to the stir the separate premier caused and the media buzz around that. But I’m not super dialed in. I wonder what every else’s perception is.

Flaa was recently interviewed. The baby bump interview had never seen the light of day and she posted it. She said she saw that Blake was having a moment and she wanted to post that very provocative headline about her. It was something like “the time Blake lively made me want to quit my job.” She said she deliberately used Blake and not Parker because Blake is much more popular. She fully admitted she wanted clicks, saying “I’m a journalist, clicks are important and of course I wanted them” or something like that.

I think this is fascinating because a lot of influencers posting about her at the time wanted clicks. The thing about Blake -she does get clicks, she had over 45 million followers before this, and the time leading up to the premier she was seen with Taylor Swift a lot. I’m not a big Blake fan, but I definitely clicked on articles featuring her and Taylor on their New York City dinner nights, the Super Bowl, etc. So my feed would often post unrelated things about Blake even from her gossip girl days. She definitely gets a lot of clicks, there’s tons of fan sites that post her when she’s out and about because of that.

For a celebrity, it works great when you are popular and liked and people are posting about how great you are with your celeb husband, and your bestie etc, but it also works really well for influencers when you are not so well liked or when you are in the middle of a controversy or scandal. And on this very threaded we’ve speculated that this drama could’ve actually helped the movie. So it’s going to be hard for them to even argue that inherently bad and negative headlines about Blake were hurting her financially. And obviously, she was the one that decided to stir up the drama with Justin. That was not his decision, and he was actually doing the opposite and saying really nice things about her and the cast.

There are some people probably making their living right now doing podcasts and reels and TikTok’s about this legal case and the same was true during the premiere time. It is getting so much attention and clicks - I assume her team is going to have to show that a lot of of this was generated not organically by Jed and team, but I think that’s going to be hard because I think a lot of of it truly was organic - this kind of clickbait is lucrative.

If Justin’s team was smart, they would get a bunch of the top influencers saying just that.

For Flaa to be out saying she was never contacted is significant- and that interview - which had again never been released before - was one of the most viral at the time and generated a lot of other people uncovering other interviews to get those clicks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It’s not even really a “setback.” The jr associates here are acting like getting your discovery narrowed by the judge is some kind of disaster. The whole point was to freak out the other side with a broad request.

I don't think it's a disaster, but I think their subpoena was pointless and time wasting. I don't think it freaked the other side out at all. At most I can see the strategy was to ask for a very broad subpoena that any defendant would absolutely move to quash so they could get in a few silly jabs in the press about Justin and Wayfarer not wanting to show the "receipts" which is just not a strategy I respect. The whole point was they weren't asking for "the receipts" but a bunch of irrelevant, private information.

And yet there is nothing to indicate implementation of any plan ever! The most controversial language was Nathan and Abel agreeing that they were astonished that they didn’t have to act against Lively because of her own goals, and they agreed it was “sad” but “don’t like be a c-.”

"We are crushing on it reddit thanks to Jed" was a pretty good indicator. Baldoni quizzing them about bots and them saying that's not us is a good indicator that there was a paid astroturfing plan in motion that he didn't want to look obvious. I can't buy that they had this whole plan developed, things happened according to the plan, they discussed how they were crushing it, but then claim it actually all was organic. Perhaps the jury will disagree with me, but I think there's enough there for her claims to survive to trial. I'm not saying Lively is likeable. Indeed she had issues and part of their plan was leveraging her own past, real, issues and interviews to destroy her credibility in case her SH complaints should come to life.

Wondering if someone could explain astroturfing and what is legal and illegal? There was just an article that apparently Blake has purchased hundreds of thousands of fake Instagram followers to stop her very obvious drop in followers. I imagine that’s perfectly legal, but it is definitely deceptive to the public.

Is anything Jed is doing legal? Or we think everything is illegal?

PP. To my understanding astroturfing isn't illegal. I would argue it's protected under the first amendment. It's just speech saying someone sucks. You're just having someone else say it instead of saying it directly. It is deceptive and unethical. In order for it to be unlawful and actionable, IMO you need something more.

Astroturfing could be unlawful if it includes defamation, the planting of false statements of fact. As long as this campaign stuck to opinions and true facts, that's not unlawful. If they asked Flaa, or even paid her, to post the interview, since the interview is real, that wouldn't be unlawful, nor would it be unlawful, IMO, to hire people to upvote it on reddit and post comments that Blake sounds like a B.

Tortious interference in a business could be another one. Say you own a restaurant and your competitor hires people to post Yelp opinions that say your food sucks and the staff is rude. Those are opinions, but this is probably unlawful and you could sue.

And then there's her claim of retaliation, which is pretty novel and interesting. The astroturfing itself is not illegal, but it becomes illegal if she can prove it was done as retaliation for reporting sexual harassment. Kind of like firing a person or demoting a person or changing their work schedule is not illegal, but it becomes so when it's done in retaliation. Without this component she wouldn't have much of a case at all. If they had just had the dispute over her taking over the film, and she wanted to ice him out of the premiere, and then he hired crisis PR to plant stories saying she's awful, I don't believe she'd have a cause of action.

Thank you, super helpful. I feel like this is going to be a tough climb for Blake‘s team because she is the one that started this drama. I was the one who posted about Flaa’s recent interview. She was angry about that interview from eight years ago and she didn’t put it out at the time and she decided to put it out now. It should be very easy to prove with an Internet forensic expert that that was organic.

But anyway, Blake was the one that decided to go negative during the premier. Justin did not try to do that. He was out there saying really nice things about Blake in fact. So it’s going to be hard for them to prove that Justin hired the PR firm in retaliation to the sexual harassment. He likely hired the PR firm to counter the terrible things people were saying about him in speculating why he was not allowed at his own premiere.

[Anonymous]

For Flaa to be out saying she was never contacted is significant- and that interview - which had again never been released before - was one of the most viral at the time and generated a lot of other people uncovering other interviews to get those clicks.

I had posted earlier that I couldn't imagine why Flaa would post that if she hadn't been contacted by Baldoni but you have made a pretty persuasive case, so thanks. I still felt something about that was inorganic even before the lawsuit (I'm not a Blake fan at all, but I remember hearing about this so much and the interview was so old and didn't seem like that big of a deal to generate such attention). You've given me food for thought, though. Some of us posting here really are open to either side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

For Flaa to be out saying she was never contacted is significant- and that interview - which had again never been released before - was one of the most viral at the time and generated a lot of other people uncovering other interviews to get those clicks.

I had posted earlier that I couldn't imagine why Flaa would post that if she hadn't been contacted by Baldoni but you have made a pretty persuasive case, so thanks. I still felt something about that was inorganic even before the lawsuit (I'm not a Blake fan at all, but I remember hearing about this so much and the interview was so old and didn't seem like that big of a deal to generate such attention). You've given me food for thought, though. Some of us posting here really are open to either side.

No. You are not open at all. You posted flatly as if you had objective evidence that Flaa was “connected” to Depp/Heard and must be here - a total lie. To you, that apparently is not dishonest or lying. It is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

For Flaa to be out saying she was never contacted is significant- and that interview - which had again never been released before - was one of the most viral at the time and generated a lot of other people uncovering other interviews to get those clicks.

I had posted earlier that I couldn't imagine why Flaa would post that if she hadn't been contacted by Baldoni but you have made a pretty persuasive case, so thanks. I still felt something about that was inorganic even before the lawsuit (I'm not a Blake fan at all, but I remember hearing about this so much and the interview was so old and didn't seem like that big of a deal to generate such attention). You've given me food for thought, though. Some of us posting here really are open to either side.

No. You are not open at all. You posted flatly as if you had objective evidence that Flaa was “connected” to Depp/Heard and must be here - a total lie. To you, that apparently is not dishonest or lying. It is.

I thought I had read something about a concrete connection to Depp and Wallace. I was misinformed, but it was my honest opinion. I have now googled and it appears she only posted pro-Depp postings, which she states was her personal opinion. That PP gave a good overview of non-astroturfing motivations she would have had to repost the interview. Sorry, I forgot that we have to be 100% pro-Baldoni on here, and even saying we reconsidered and are now willing to accept the pro-Baldoni position isn't good enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

For Flaa to be out saying she was never contacted is significant- and that interview - which had again never been released before - was one of the most viral at the time and generated a lot of other people uncovering other interviews to get those clicks.

I had posted earlier that I couldn't imagine why Flaa would post that if she hadn't been contacted by Baldoni but you have made a pretty persuasive case, so thanks. I still felt something about that was inorganic even before the lawsuit (I'm not a Blake fan at all, but I remember hearing about this so much and the interview was so old and didn't seem like that big of a deal to generate such attention). You've given me food for thought, though. Some of us posting here really are open to either side.

No. You are not open at all. You posted flatly as if you had objective evidence that Flaa was “connected” to Depp/Heard and must be here - a total lie. To you, that apparently is not dishonest or lying. It is.

I thought I had read something about a concrete connection to Depp and Wallace. I was misinformed, but it was my honest opinion. I have now googled and it appears she only posted pro-Depp postings, which she states was her personal opinion. That PP gave a good overview of non-astroturfing motivations she would have had to repost the interview. Sorry, I forgot that we have to be 100% pro-Baldoni on here, and even saying we reconsidered and are now willing to accept the pro-Baldoni position isn't good enough.

Having your feelings is one thing. Presenting them falsely as having a solid factual basis is very much another.

[Anonymous]

Candace is soooo good at breaking this down. And you know Ryan, Blake and Ari watch every minute of it sick to their stomachs. lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It’s not even really a “setback.” The jr associates here are acting like getting your discovery narrowed by the judge is some kind of disaster. The whole point was to freak out the other side with a broad request.

I don't think it's a disaster, but I think their subpoena was pointless and time wasting. I don't think it freaked the other side out at all. At most I can see the strategy was to ask for a very broad subpoena that any defendant would absolutely move to quash so they could get in a few silly jabs in the press about Justin and Wayfarer not wanting to show the "receipts" which is just not a strategy I respect. The whole point was they weren't asking for "the receipts" but a bunch of irrelevant, private information.

And yet there is nothing to indicate implementation of any plan ever! The most controversial language was Nathan and Abel agreeing that they were astonished that they didn’t have to act against Lively because of her own goals, and they agreed it was “sad” but “don’t like be a c-.”

"We are crushing on it reddit thanks to Jed" was a pretty good indicator. Baldoni quizzing them about bots and them saying that's not us is a good indicator that there was a paid astroturfing plan in motion that he didn't want to look obvious. I can't buy that they had this whole plan developed, things happened according to the plan, they discussed how they were crushing it, but then claim it actually all was organic. Perhaps the jury will disagree with me, but I think there's enough there for her claims to survive to trial. I'm not saying Lively is likeable. Indeed she had issues and part of their plan was leveraging her own past, real, issues and interviews to destroy her credibility in case her SH complaints should come to life.

Wondering if someone could explain astroturfing and what is legal and illegal? There was just an article that apparently Blake has purchased hundreds of thousands of fake Instagram followers to stop her very obvious drop in followers. I imagine that’s perfectly legal, but it is definitely deceptive to the public.

Is anything Jed is doing legal? Or we think everything is illegal?

PP. To my understanding astroturfing isn't illegal. I would argue it's protected under the first amendment. It's just speech saying someone sucks. You're just having someone else say it instead of saying it directly. It is deceptive and unethical. In order for it to be unlawful and actionable, IMO you need something more.

Astroturfing could be unlawful if it includes defamation, the planting of false statements of fact. As long as this campaign stuck to opinions and true facts, that's not unlawful. If they asked Flaa, or even paid her, to post the interview, since the interview is real, that wouldn't be unlawful, nor would it be unlawful, IMO, to hire people to upvote it on reddit and post comments that Blake sounds like a B.

Tortious interference in a business could be another one. Say you own a restaurant and your competitor hires people to post Yelp opinions that say your food sucks and the staff is rude. Those are opinions, but this is probably unlawful and you could sue.

And then there's her claim of retaliation, which is pretty novel and interesting. The astroturfing itself is not illegal, but it becomes illegal if she can prove it was done as retaliation for reporting sexual harassment. Kind of like firing a person or demoting a person or changing their work schedule is not illegal, but it becomes so when it's done in retaliation. Without this component she wouldn't have much of a case at all. If they had just had the dispute over her taking over the film, and she wanted to ice him out of the premiere, and then he hired crisis PR to plant stories saying she's awful, I don't believe she'd have a cause of action.

Thank you, super helpful. I feel like this is going to be a tough climb for Blake‘s team because she is the one that started this drama. I was the one who posted about Flaa’s recent interview. She was angry about that interview from eight years ago and she didn’t put it out at the time and she decided to put it out now. It should be very easy to prove with an Internet forensic expert that that was organic.

But anyway, Blake was the one that decided to go negative during the premier. Justin did not try to do that. He was out there saying really nice things about Blake in fact. So it’s going to be hard for them to prove that Justin hired the PR firm in retaliation to the sexual harassment. He likely hired the PR firm to counter the terrible things people were saying about him in speculating why he was not allowed at his own premiere.

They literally have texts/docs that show:

- Baldoni/Wayfarer hired their crisis team before the premiere and with the goal of going negative on Lively (this is not my speculation, this is in the TAG proposal that was given to Wayfarer in their pitch)
- Baldoni wanted the campaign to portray Lively as Haley Bieber had recently been portrayed in the media -- as a "mean girl"
- Drag up prior interviews and rumors of conflicts with previous costars going all the way back to Gossip Girl days
- Jed Wallace was contracted in some capacity and that the work of his team provided good results across SM channels
- Baldoni wanted to make sure the campaign could not be traced back to him or Wayfarer (expressing concern about posts that looked like bots and how that could blow back on him)

There are also texts in the Jonesworks suit that could come into play, that show:

- Multiple crisis teams were recommended to Wayfarer by Stephanie Jones and Jennifer Abel in July
- But Jennifer Abel pushed the idea of Melissa Nathan's firm, TAG, which had previously worked on the Depp/Heard trial on behalf of Depp
- Stephanie Jones explicitly warned Abel off of hiring TAG, described Nathan's methods as "shady" in texts to Abel, and was concerned about sending Wayfarer in this direction (all of this happened in July, two weeks before the premiere)
- There is also some indication that a negative story about Justin that was published right before Wayfarer hired TAG (over Jones' objections) was planted BY Melissa Nathan. The story was published in Page Six and guess who the journalist was? It was Sara Nathan, Melissa Nathan's sister.

I'm sorry. I truly am not a Blake Lively fan, I never even saw this movie, and Ryan Reynolds genuinely annoys me. But this stuff is damning. And it's right there in the words and texts of Baldoni, Heath, Abel, and Nathan. Not hearsay that someone told them about. In their texts. From before the premiere. How do you explain this away? And I haven't even gotten to the texts where Abel trashes Justin, indicates that she can't stand him and doesn't believe him, etc. This is not like some crackpot theory Lively cooked up with Reynolds. It's right there in the texts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Candace is soooo good at breaking this down. And you know Ryan, Blake and Ari watch every minute of it sick to their stomachs. lol

Every time you cite Candace Owens as a reliable source on this, I become more convinced that Baldoni and Wayfarer are sketchy AF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Candace is soooo good at breaking this down. And you know Ryan, Blake and Ari watch every minute of it sick to their stomachs. lol

Every time you cite Candace Owens as a reliable source on this, I become more convinced that Baldoni and Wayfarer are sketchy AF.

DP. That’s because you don’t make logical connections, and drag the conversation down as much as the person repeatedly citing to Candace Owens. There are dispassionate legal bloggers and PR experts who find Wayfarer to be the more fair dealing party in this conflict, for what it’s worth.

[Anonymous]

NYT has filed a motion to dismiss, the motion and some of the attachments (some interesting info there) are available on court listener already: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69510553/106/lively-v-wayfarer-studios-llc/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NYT has filed a motion to dismiss, the motion and some of the attachments (some interesting info there) are available on court listener already: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69510553/106/lively-v-wayfarer-studios-llc/

My favorite quote so far: "Throughout their blunderbuss complaint, the Wayfarer Parties seek to drag The Times into their larger feud with Lively."

Blunderbuss. Perfect. Underused. Adding it to the arsenal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NYT has filed a motion to dismiss, the motion and some of the attachments (some interesting info there) are available on court listener already: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69510553/106/lively-v-wayfarer-studios-llc/

My favorite quote so far: "Throughout their blunderbuss complaint, the Wayfarer Parties seek to drag The Times into their larger feud with Lively."

Blunderbuss. Perfect. Underused. Adding it to the arsenal.

Another great quote:

In fact, in this way, the Wayfarer Parties’ FAC is like that in Komatsu, which the court dismissed in part because the complaints’ length and “tangents” “make it difficult to understand exactly how the facts alleged provide a basis for Plaintiff’s claims—or which facts support which allegations—causing significant prejudice to Defendants who must sift through hundreds of pages ... to fully ascertain the nature of the charges against them.”

It's honestly a relief to see someone correctly describing that Wayfarer complaint as the meandering, publicity-focused mess it is. I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Candace is soooo good at breaking this down. And you know Ryan, Blake and Ari watch every minute of it sick to their stomachs. lol

Every time you cite Candace Owens as a reliable source on this, I become more convinced that Baldoni and Wayfarer are sketchy AF.

Are you the person who admitted they refresh a dozen websites and social media all day long? lol