Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

I'm PP and agree, it will be really hard to prove - first of all that the bots existed, and second, that they were the cause of whatever business she lost. Freedman is arguing the idea is so crazy that even accusing him of it is essentially lying because no one could think this concept is real. But it was in TAG's PR plan submitted by Melissa Nathan, and Baldoni hired her, so they seemed to consider it a real concept. Most people are familiar with the idea of astroturfing, that's not crazy. Whether they did is another story, I know they claim Wallace found them "crushing it" organically and it wasn't necessary.

Maybe he’s arguing the “untraceable” part of her allegation is crazy? I mean nothing’s untraceable. I don’t remember what was in Nathan’s plan, but I do remember Justin emailing or texting her saying “I don’t want bots defending me” and she replied they didn’t use bots but had observed that Blake’s team was using bots.

I found his quote. I just think this is such a stretch. She quotes "untraceable" literally from the TAG document. To me this is admitting they haven't correctly plead actual malice.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.162.0_1.pdf
The fantastical notion that the backlash was caused by an “untraceable” smear campaign is “so inherently
improbable that only a reckless person would have put [the claim] in circulation.” St. Amant v.
Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968). Taken collectively, the allegations in the FAC are more than
sufficient to create an inference that Lively acted with “actual malice.”

Where in the TAG report? I skimmed back over the service agreement and scenarios doc but didn’t see that word. I did see the exhibit Jed pointed out that shows sentiment turned negative in July before he was hired (and I believe before the scenarios doc). Seems like BL’s team has some contradictory evidence.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

I'm PP and agree, it will be really hard to prove - first of all that the bots existed, and second, that they were the cause of whatever business she lost. Freedman is arguing the idea is so crazy that even accusing him of it is essentially lying because no one could think this concept is real. But it was in TAG's PR plan submitted by Melissa Nathan, and Baldoni hired her, so they seemed to consider it a real concept. Most people are familiar with the idea of astroturfing, that's not crazy. Whether they did is another story, I know they claim Wallace found them "crushing it" organically and it wasn't necessary.

Maybe he’s arguing the “untraceable” part of her allegation is crazy? I mean nothing’s untraceable. I don’t remember what was in Nathan’s plan, but I do remember Justin emailing or texting her saying “I don’t want bots defending me” and she replied they didn’t use bots but had observed that Blake’s team was using bots.

I found his quote. I just think this is such a stretch. She quotes "untraceable" literally from the TAG document. To me this is admitting they haven't correctly plead actual malice.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.162.0_1.pdf
The fantastical notion that the backlash was caused by an “untraceable” smear campaign is “so inherently
improbable that only a reckless person would have put [the claim] in circulation.” St. Amant v.
Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968). Taken collectively, the allegations in the FAC are more than
sufficient to create an inference that Lively acted with “actual malice.”

Where in the TAG report? I skimmed back over the service agreement and scenarios doc but didn’t see that word. I did see the exhibit Jed pointed out that shows sentiment turned negative in July before he was hired (and I believe before the scenarios doc). Seems like BL’s team has some contradictory evidence.

It's from the quotes that came with the TAG proposal. Pg 41 of original complaint signed by "M." (Melissa Nathan)

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I see this letter people reference above. Technically, it's not Freedman, it's someone else from the lawyer team. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.168.0.pdf

They've asked for more time to respond to the doc requests, yes, and also an extension of time to move to amend their pleadings so that it's based off the court's forthcoming MTD rulings - 21 days later. Lively parties don't want to agree to this because the schedule wasn't originally set up to base leave to amend off MTD rulings, so why should they be allowing Baldoni all this extra time to fix his stupid complaint that he's put no effort into so far when he could be working on that right now? (lol - haven't they already given him that roadmap? so what's his problem?) Fritz (the Baldoni lawyer) also faults the Lively parties etc for not giving a reason to allow the extension besides noting that the original schedule is not targeted off MTD rulings, and cites to an ethical rule requiring courtesy and cooperation at all times, so I can see why Freedman couldn't put his name on this letter.

Interested in seeing whatever the Lively attorneys will say in response. Noting that Fritz said the NYT would agree to the extension of time for filing amendments but specifically lodged that they would oppose any amendment anyway (as will any party, really).

The total number of doc requests, 1600, does seem like a lot when aggregated. But if you consider that it is split between 8 different parties it comes out to 200 RFPs per party, and that's not crazy. Each party does not need to be represented by the same law firm, so if this is too much for Freedman et al to handle they could be getting additional help. Seems like Sarowitz can afford it and it's not like these requests are a surprise to them, since Fritz said they were all served at the same time.

My guess is that Liman will give Fritz a short extension on the doc production deadline but not quite as long as he wants. I think Liman may grant the amendment deadline based off his MTD orders, but I'm not sure. It annoys me that Freedman vaingloriously boasted about how the Lively parties had already given him a roadmap re what he'd have to do to fix his complaint, and yet he makes no effort to do anything with that information and now sits here pleading with the judge for more time. I know, I know, parties are liberally granted leave to amend etc. But much of his complaint is garbage and yet he is sitting on his hands, so I hope Liman splits the baby here, too, somehow.

Your argument is silly. The judge will give them more time for both. This is basic stuff. Lively’s attorneys are being a-holes just to be a-holes, there’s really no reason to oppose something like this. Of course Baldoni’s team wants to wait for the judge’s ruling to do any amendments. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. And since Lively’s team requested 5 times as many interrogatories as baldoni’s, of course they’ll need more time. Lively’s lawyers aren’t doing themselves any favors with the judge. The only thing I can think is they’re not concerned about generating goodwill because they know their MTDs won’t be granted and they’re planning to settle before trial. You see the nyt, which has a better case for dismissal, is behaving much more in accordance with the rules of decorum.

Gee, I must have missed the complaints about Team Baldoni’s holier than thou attitude in comments like the above when it happened, telling me I was silly and had missed very basic stuff above but then turning out to be quite wrong. Okay for thee I guess.

(Still zero Team Baldoni attorneys so far admitting they were wrong or explaining why.)

I wasn’t this poster, but have already responded to you twice that the denial of this extension is less strange than the denial of the consented to extension request of the Lively group earlier in this case. It means nothing more than this judge is much less likely to grant extensions than your typical federal judge. It also means he is trying to pressure ALL parties to settle by accelerating the time line.

I mean, thanks fwiw, but that's not the question I've repeatedly asked. I've asked the Team Baldoni attorneys who made the snide comments and follow up comments above to admit they were wrong about this issue (so far not a single Team Baldoni attorney has admitted they were wrong about this or the PO though they repeatedly insulted my own predictions) and explain why they misjudged the outcome.

I think you are suggesting that they MAY have been wrong because federal judges often take more liberal approaches to extensions than Liman has taken here, and they did not expect Liman would be so stingy here, even though in this case he already had denied a different consent extension request and even though Baldoni's attorneys had not even stated the standard for good cause or explained why they met it.

This isn't a big deal to many people in this thread and that's fine, but I'm allowed to ask about it, because these two attorneys have repeatedly been jerks to me and others. And yet they were wrong again after saying the issue was so easy. The same people are also saying that Liman is going to allow repeated complaint amendments -- like six or seven amended complaints I guess -- when the stated deadline for amending complaints is this Friday, so I suspect they're not right about that either.

It is basically unheard of for first request for extensions to be denied and even more rare for consented to requests to be denied. This judge is an outlier.

I wonder if that means he'll dismiss some of the more out there claims without leave to amend.

I think Liman's decisions are all related to the group pleading issue.

The FAC has a big group pleading defect, everyone knows it including Wayfarer who has admitted as such in their own pleadings. So obviously for that case to proceed at all, it has to be corrected.

Correcting the group pleading issue will almost certainly result in many defendants no longer being included in many of the claims, unless Wayfarer can find a basis for alleging conspiracy, which they don't seem to have at this point. It's possible that discovery could turn up evidence of conspiracy, at which point they could always add that claim back in with an additional amendment. But most likely the SAC will drop all or most of the conspiracy claims and also drop many of the other claims against many of the defendants, especially Sloane and Reynolds.

Thus, OF COURSE Liman wants Wayfarer to hurry up and file the SAC. Because if they wind up fixing the group pleading issue AND dropping certain claims against certain defendants, this greatly reduces the work he has to do on the MTDs. Much of the existing MTDs will be essentially moot once the SAC is filed, most likely. So then he can just rule on whatever is remaining, and ideally not even have to dismiss some claims without prejudice.

It's very common for judges, especially at this stage in litigation, to push a lot of issues onto parties to work out for themselves. Judge Liman has zero interest in parsing through all these MTDs, an FAC with a glaring defect, and then trying to decide what to dismiss with prejudice and without prejudice. He wants the parties to sort it out. It's the same with discovery. He has no interest in ruling on every minor little battle over discovery, so he's going to push as much of that as possible back to the parties via a meet and confer.

This is normal. So yes, he wants Wayfarer to hurry up and fix the big defect in the FAC and figure out exactly what claims they are actually bringing against which defendants, and then he can weigh in on whatever is left at the MTD phase. And yeah, he'll be fine waiting on the Lively parties to issue responses to the SAC and amended MTDs because, again, this just makes less work for him. Let the lawyers clean it up first. Anyone who has ever clerked for a civil court judge should be familiar with this process.

This is all pretty standard and, from what I've heard of Liman, how he frequently handles this stage of litigation.

Again, this is mostly nonsense, per usual. Judges not definitely not rely on the parties to sorr out motions to dismiss amongst themselves. I stopped reading once I realized the author.

I don't think you're giving a fair reading to what PP said, rather than creating an easy strawman for yourself to knock over. PP is saying that Liman would prefer for the parties to strategically eliminate their stupidest claims themselves and narrow the field on what he needs to decide in the MTDs, and while judges certainly aren't shy about eliminating stupid claims I agree that it's less work for them if the parties will do that themselves, and they like that. Nowhere above does PP say that judges "rely on the parties to sort out motions to dismiss amongst themselves." PP said of course Judge Liman wants to see Freedman's amended complaint before ruling on the MTDs because that will help him figure out whether dismissing with prejudice is warranted. I absolutely agree with that. If you disagree with something above, why not try using your words instead of just emoting smarminess and atittude.

In general, if you would just be specific in what you are predicting the judge will do and why you think he will do it, it will make it much easier to call you on it later if/when you are wrong, which is especially helpful when you project the smug attitude shown above.

(If you thought the prior author was me, the person calling out the two smug Baldoni attorneys on their prior wrongness, you are wrong again!)

I’m not predicting anything. And I think I used my words just fine.

I read this as Team Baldoni insult attorneys are no longer weighing in on most legal issues because they are gun shy and don’t really know wtf is going to happen wrt Liman’s willingness to dismiss claims with prejudice and limit further amendment to keep the case on schedule, yet they are happy to take potshots at attorneys who do weigh in on these issues. Classy as always, A++.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

No. Filing an improper subpoena request is not illegal. And Lively gettings/seeing the texts even before the subpoena is also not illegal (it may have breached Jones' contract with Wayfarere, but Lively's actions are not illegal). So no, nothing about the subpoena helps Baldoni's case against Lively. His defamation claims are not regarding release of the texts (which are not statements by Lively). They relate to her accusing him of sexual harassment, Sloane's statements to the press on Lively's behalf about the conflict between them, and Reynold's comments to WME agents.

I'll repeat: the subpoena is 100% irrelevant to the conflict between Lively and Baldoni. It has no bearing on the case.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

Amber Heard was definitely the victim of a bot campaign online. I watched it unfold. You don't have to be a bot expert to recognize that one. And *of course* it was Depp. This is all so ludicrous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

I'm PP and agree, it will be really hard to prove - first of all that the bots existed, and second, that they were the cause of whatever business she lost. Freedman is arguing the idea is so crazy that even accusing him of it is essentially lying because no one could think this concept is real. But it was in TAG's PR plan submitted by Melissa Nathan, and Baldoni hired her, so they seemed to consider it a real concept. Most people are familiar with the idea of astroturfing, that's not crazy. Whether they did is another story, I know they claim Wallace found them "crushing it" organically and it wasn't necessary.

Maybe he’s arguing the “untraceable” part of her allegation is crazy? I mean nothing’s untraceable. I don’t remember what was in Nathan’s plan, but I do remember Justin emailing or texting her saying “I don’t want bots defending me” and she replied they didn’t use bots but had observed that Blake’s team was using bots.

I found his quote. I just think this is such a stretch. She quotes "untraceable" literally from the TAG document. To me this is admitting they haven't correctly plead actual malice.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.162.0_1.pdf
The fantastical notion that the backlash was caused by an “untraceable” smear campaign is “so inherently
improbable that only a reckless person would have put [the claim] in circulation.” St. Amant v.
Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968). Taken collectively, the allegations in the FAC are more than
sufficient to create an inference that Lively acted with “actual malice.”

Where in the TAG report? I skimmed back over the service agreement and scenarios doc but didn’t see that word. I did see the exhibit Jed pointed out that shows sentiment turned negative in July before he was hired (and I believe before the scenarios doc). Seems like BL’s team has some contradictory evidence.

It's from the quotes that came with the TAG proposal. Pg 41 of original complaint signed by "M." (Melissa Nathan)

In Blake’s complaint or somewhere else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

I'm PP and agree, it will be really hard to prove - first of all that the bots existed, and second, that they were the cause of whatever business she lost. Freedman is arguing the idea is so crazy that even accusing him of it is essentially lying because no one could think this concept is real. But it was in TAG's PR plan submitted by Melissa Nathan, and Baldoni hired her, so they seemed to consider it a real concept. Most people are familiar with the idea of astroturfing, that's not crazy. Whether they did is another story, I know they claim Wallace found them "crushing it" organically and it wasn't necessary.

Maybe he’s arguing the “untraceable” part of her allegation is crazy? I mean nothing’s untraceable. I don’t remember what was in Nathan’s plan, but I do remember Justin emailing or texting her saying “I don’t want bots defending me” and she replied they didn’t use bots but had observed that Blake’s team was using bots.

I found his quote. I just think this is such a stretch. She quotes "untraceable" literally from the TAG document. To me this is admitting they haven't correctly plead actual malice.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.162.0_1.pdf
The fantastical notion that the backlash was caused by an “untraceable” smear campaign is “so inherently
improbable that only a reckless person would have put [the claim] in circulation.” St. Amant v.
Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968). Taken collectively, the allegations in the FAC are more than
sufficient to create an inference that Lively acted with “actual malice.”

Where in the TAG report? I skimmed back over the service agreement and scenarios doc but didn’t see that word. I did see the exhibit Jed pointed out that shows sentiment turned negative in July before he was hired (and I believe before the scenarios doc). Seems like BL’s team has some contradictory evidence.

It's from the quotes that came with the TAG proposal. Pg 41 of original complaint signed by "M." (Melissa Nathan)

In Blake’s complaint or somewhere else?

Blake's first complaint on the docket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

Amber Heard was definitely the victim of a bot campaign online. I watched it unfold. You don't have to be a bot expert to recognize that one. And *of course* it was Depp. This is all so ludicrous.

Your gut instinct that “of course it was depp” is not enough unfortunately. You need evidence. The key points here are that experts contradict each other all the time and the presence of bots does not mean they were unleashed by your supposed enemy when the internet abounds with opportunists. BL is going to have a hard time proving this. Remember the most viral of all the videos, the little bump video, was completely organic b/c a journalist saw an opening to get clicks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

I'm PP and agree, it will be really hard to prove - first of all that the bots existed, and second, that they were the cause of whatever business she lost. Freedman is arguing the idea is so crazy that even accusing him of it is essentially lying because no one could think this concept is real. But it was in TAG's PR plan submitted by Melissa Nathan, and Baldoni hired her, so they seemed to consider it a real concept. Most people are familiar with the idea of astroturfing, that's not crazy. Whether they did is another story, I know they claim Wallace found them "crushing it" organically and it wasn't necessary.

Maybe he’s arguing the “untraceable” part of her allegation is crazy? I mean nothing’s untraceable. I don’t remember what was in Nathan’s plan, but I do remember Justin emailing or texting her saying “I don’t want bots defending me” and she replied they didn’t use bots but had observed that Blake’s team was using bots.

I found his quote. I just think this is such a stretch. She quotes "untraceable" literally from the TAG document. To me this is admitting they haven't correctly plead actual malice.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.162.0_1.pdf
The fantastical notion that the backlash was caused by an “untraceable” smear campaign is “so inherently
improbable that only a reckless person would have put [the claim] in circulation.” St. Amant v.
Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968). Taken collectively, the allegations in the FAC are more than
sufficient to create an inference that Lively acted with “actual malice.”

Where in the TAG report? I skimmed back over the service agreement and scenarios doc but didn’t see that word. I did see the exhibit Jed pointed out that shows sentiment turned negative in July before he was hired (and I believe before the scenarios doc). Seems like BL’s team has some contradictory evidence.

It's from the quotes that came with the TAG proposal. Pg 41 of original complaint signed by "M." (Melissa Nathan)

In Blake’s complaint or somewhere else?

Blake's first complaint on the docket.

Found it. Thank you. I had actually seen those price quotes before but they don’t mention Blake anywhere. She has to prove he was smearing her and not just trying to craft a positive narrative of himself, which is just what PR people do for their clients. Blake’s PR team is doing that as we speak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

Amber Heard was definitely the victim of a bot campaign online. I watched it unfold. You don't have to be a bot expert to recognize that one. And *of course* it was Depp. This is all so ludicrous.

Your gut instinct that “of course it was depp” is not enough unfortunately. You need evidence. The key points here are that experts contradict each other all the time and the presence of bots does not mean they were unleashed by your supposed enemy when the internet abounds with opportunists. BL is going to have a hard time proving this. Remember the most viral of all the videos, the little bump video, was completely organic b/c a journalist saw an opening to get clicks.

It is simply logical that the bot attack on Heard was associated with Depp. This isn't court. Logic is good enough for me in this situation.

You want to argue that because some people claimed there wasn't a bot attack on Heard, then we simply can't know if a bot attack is happening, ever. Nope. First, there was definitely a bot account on Heard. This is simply undeniably. A significant amount of the negative commentary about Heard during the trial was traced to foreign bot farms that can be identified as such due to their online activity (posting identical things on hundreds of threads, the timing of these posts, etc.). Amber Heard was the victim of an online bot attack. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is simply not to be taken seriously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

I'm PP and agree, it will be really hard to prove - first of all that the bots existed, and second, that they were the cause of whatever business she lost. Freedman is arguing the idea is so crazy that even accusing him of it is essentially lying because no one could think this concept is real. But it was in TAG's PR plan submitted by Melissa Nathan, and Baldoni hired her, so they seemed to consider it a real concept. Most people are familiar with the idea of astroturfing, that's not crazy. Whether they did is another story, I know they claim Wallace found them "crushing it" organically and it wasn't necessary.

Maybe he’s arguing the “untraceable” part of her allegation is crazy? I mean nothing’s untraceable. I don’t remember what was in Nathan’s plan, but I do remember Justin emailing or texting her saying “I don’t want bots defending me” and she replied they didn’t use bots but had observed that Blake’s team was using bots.

I found his quote. I just think this is such a stretch. She quotes "untraceable" literally from the TAG document. To me this is admitting they haven't correctly plead actual malice.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.162.0_1.pdf
The fantastical notion that the backlash was caused by an “untraceable” smear campaign is “so inherently
improbable that only a reckless person would have put [the claim] in circulation.” St. Amant v.
Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968). Taken collectively, the allegations in the FAC are more than
sufficient to create an inference that Lively acted with “actual malice.”

Where in the TAG report? I skimmed back over the service agreement and scenarios doc but didn’t see that word. I did see the exhibit Jed pointed out that shows sentiment turned negative in July before he was hired (and I believe before the scenarios doc). Seems like BL’s team has some contradictory evidence.

It's from the quotes that came with the TAG proposal. Pg 41 of original complaint signed by "M." (Melissa Nathan)

In Blake’s complaint or somewhere else?

Blake's first complaint on the docket.

Found it. Thank you. I had actually seen those price quotes before but they don’t mention Blake anywhere. She has to prove he was smearing her and not just trying to craft a positive narrative of himself, which is just what PR people do for their clients. Blake’s PR team is doing that as we speak.

Yes, I agree she needs to prove it in court which will be hard, but my original reason in bringing it up is Freedman saying this idea is so fantastical that Lively even alleging this proves actual malice, when this idea originated from Melissa Nathan who proposed to charge 175k for this and was ultimately hired by Baldoni so whatever they did in the end, this was a serious proposal. This is another pleading problem for Freedman. As it pertains to defamation of Baldoni he needs to plead actual facts that show Lively parties knew their statements were false or entertained serious doubts about their falsity, and quoting from Nathan’s proposal actually shows the opposite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

I'm PP and agree, it will be really hard to prove - first of all that the bots existed, and second, that they were the cause of whatever business she lost. Freedman is arguing the idea is so crazy that even accusing him of it is essentially lying because no one could think this concept is real. But it was in TAG's PR plan submitted by Melissa Nathan, and Baldoni hired her, so they seemed to consider it a real concept. Most people are familiar with the idea of astroturfing, that's not crazy. Whether they did is another story, I know they claim Wallace found them "crushing it" organically and it wasn't necessary.

Maybe he’s arguing the “untraceable” part of her allegation is crazy? I mean nothing’s untraceable. I don’t remember what was in Nathan’s plan, but I do remember Justin emailing or texting her saying “I don’t want bots defending me” and she replied they didn’t use bots but had observed that Blake’s team was using bots.

I found his quote. I just think this is such a stretch. She quotes "untraceable" literally from the TAG document. To me this is admitting they haven't correctly plead actual malice.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.162.0_1.pdf
The fantastical notion that the backlash was caused by an “untraceable” smear campaign is “so inherently
improbable that only a reckless person would have put [the claim] in circulation.” St. Amant v.
Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968). Taken collectively, the allegations in the FAC are more than
sufficient to create an inference that Lively acted with “actual malice.”

Where in the TAG report? I skimmed back over the service agreement and scenarios doc but didn’t see that word. I did see the exhibit Jed pointed out that shows sentiment turned negative in July before he was hired (and I believe before the scenarios doc). Seems like BL’s team has some contradictory evidence.

It's from the quotes that came with the TAG proposal. Pg 41 of original complaint signed by "M." (Melissa Nathan)

In Blake’s complaint or somewhere else?

Blake's first complaint on the docket.

Found it. Thank you. I had actually seen those price quotes before but they don’t mention Blake anywhere. She has to prove he was smearing her and not just trying to craft a positive narrative of himself, which is just what PR people do for their clients. Blake’s PR team is doing that as we speak.

The "untraceable" quotes are not presented in isolation. Nathan provides two quotes in an email and says that the work or either quote would be "untraceable." Later TAG outlines a fuller plan for Wayfarer that details explicit action they would take against Lively under certain scenarios, including spreading negative content about Lively's past behavior on other projects and conflicts with other past costars, as well as attacks on Swift as a proxy for Lively and her "weaponization of feminism." And then Lively identifies online content that does exactly this.

Later, Baldoni sends a link to Abel/Nathan of a negative story about Hailey Bieber online, accusing her of bullying, and says that they needs something like this, seemingly confirming both Baldoni's intent in hiring the crisis team is to go after Lively, and also showing a blueprint for the kind of criticism of Lively that Baldoni and Wayfarer expected TAG to produce.

There are then also texts between Baldoni and Abel/Nathan in which he expresses concern that some of the activity he has seen online look like bots and he is worried these could be traced to him/Wayfarer. Nathan replies that they use more sophisticated methods than this, and then also states that Jed Wallace has touched base with Jamey Heath on this issue.

Yes this is all circumstantial, but circumstantial evidence is evidence. It's not an air tight argument but it's a logical one and not invented or based on lies -- these are entirely the statements of Baldoni, Abel, and Nathan, in context. I'm sure Lively's team hopes to find more damning evidence during discovery to show more concretely that TAG/Wallace engaged bots and trolls to attack Lively online, and that they did so with Baldoni and Wayfarer's knowledge and encouragement. That would make a stronger case. But what they have is certainly sufficient to file a complaint and is a pretty decent argument to take to a jury in terms of retaliation.

Which means: it's not defamatory. Saying "untraceable" which is a direct quite from Nathan in that email regarding the kind of work she would do for Wayfarer, and linking it to the work that Nathan claimed to Baldoni that Wallace was doing on his behalf, is not a leap. It's not defamatory because it's plausibly true, Lively appears to believe it to be true, and the allegation is being made with malice as defined by the law (which in this case means knowledge that she is spreading a falsehood). Even if litigation privilege didn't apply to all of this, which it does, it is still not defamatory because Lively is making a perfectly reasonably allegation based on statements made by Baldoni/Abel/Nathan, in their own words.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

Amber Heard was definitely the victim of a bot campaign online. I watched it unfold. You don't have to be a bot expert to recognize that one. And *of course* it was Depp. This is all so ludicrous.

Your gut instinct that “of course it was depp” is not enough unfortunately. You need evidence. The key points here are that experts contradict each other all the time and the presence of bots does not mean they were unleashed by your supposed enemy when the internet abounds with opportunists. BL is going to have a hard time proving this. Remember the most viral of all the videos, the little bump video, was completely organic b/c a journalist saw an opening to get clicks.

It is simply logical that the bot attack on Heard was associated with Depp. This isn't court. Logic is good enough for me in this situation.

You want to argue that because some people claimed there wasn't a bot attack on Heard, then we simply can't know if a bot attack is happening, ever. Nope. First, there was definitely a bot account on Heard. This is simply undeniably. A significant amount of the negative commentary about Heard during the trial was traced to foreign bot farms that can be identified as such due to their online activity (posting identical things on hundreds of threads, the timing of these posts, etc.). Amber Heard was the victim of an online bot attack. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is simply not to be taken seriously.

DP I didn't follow Depp/Heard (which sounds like it was so much uglier than this) and I'm curious how they figured out the foreign bot farms, are there any good articles?

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Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

I'm PP and agree, it will be really hard to prove - first of all that the bots existed, and second, that they were the cause of whatever business she lost. Freedman is arguing the idea is so crazy that even accusing him of it is essentially lying because no one could think this concept is real. But it was in TAG's PR plan submitted by Melissa Nathan, and Baldoni hired her, so they seemed to consider it a real concept. Most people are familiar with the idea of astroturfing, that's not crazy. Whether they did is another story, I know they claim Wallace found them "crushing it" organically and it wasn't necessary.

Maybe he’s arguing the “untraceable” part of her allegation is crazy? I mean nothing’s untraceable. I don’t remember what was in Nathan’s plan, but I do remember Justin emailing or texting her saying “I don’t want bots defending me” and she replied they didn’t use bots but had observed that Blake’s team was using bots.

I found his quote. I just think this is such a stretch. She quotes "untraceable" literally from the TAG document. To me this is admitting they haven't correctly plead actual malice.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.162.0_1.pdf
The fantastical notion that the backlash was caused by an “untraceable” smear campaign is “so inherently
improbable that only a reckless person would have put [the claim] in circulation.” St. Amant v.
Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968). Taken collectively, the allegations in the FAC are more than
sufficient to create an inference that Lively acted with “actual malice.”

Where in the TAG report? I skimmed back over the service agreement and scenarios doc but didn’t see that word. I did see the exhibit Jed pointed out that shows sentiment turned negative in July before he was hired (and I believe before the scenarios doc). Seems like BL’s team has some contradictory evidence.

It's from the quotes that came with the TAG proposal. Pg 41 of original complaint signed by "M." (Melissa Nathan)

In Blake’s complaint or somewhere else?

Blake's first complaint on the docket.

Found it. Thank you. I had actually seen those price quotes before but they don’t mention Blake anywhere. She has to prove he was smearing her and not just trying to craft a positive narrative of himself, which is just what PR people do for their clients. Blake’s PR team is doing that as we speak.

Yes, I agree she needs to prove it in court which will be hard, but my original reason in bringing it up is Freedman saying this idea is so fantastical that Lively even alleging this proves actual malice, when this idea originated from Melissa Nathan who proposed to charge 175k for this and was ultimately hired by Baldoni so whatever they did in the end, this was a serious proposal. This is another pleading problem for Freedman. As it pertains to defamation of Baldoni he needs to plead actual facts that show Lively parties knew their statements were false or entertained serious doubts about their falsity, and quoting from Nathan’s proposal actually shows the opposite.

Yes this, exactly. There is also a text from Baldoni to Abel at one point where he describes Lively as so convinced that she is correct that she will never give up (paraphrasing, I can't go look this up right now, it might be in the Jones/Abel suit and not in the Lively complaint). it's not an admission of guilt (Baldoni clearly believes Lively is wrong about her allegations) but it is an admission that Baldoni believed Lively believed her own allegations. Which directly counteract this retroactive argument they are making that she made it all up to try and steal the movie.

The defamation allegations against Lively are actually the weakest defamation arguments they make. And thus subsequently undermine all other defamation claims because if Lively genuinely believed her allegations, then it is harder to argue that Reynolds, Sloane, or the NYT were part of a conspiracy to perpetuate an intentional lie. Because even if it is found that Baldoni did not harass Lively, she appears to have genuinely believed he did and her husband, publicist, and the NYT's found her story credible.

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Anonymous wrote:I'm not interested in the subpoena but all you need to do to talk about it is post about it. Feel free.

Same, the subpoena is totally uninteresting to me. Largely because I think the texts are admissible even without it. There may be an ND problem related to them, but that's Jones' problem and I don't really care about Stephanie Jones personally (though I find the conflict between Jones and Abel and Nathan pretty juicy and interesting, but I don't view any of them as "right" -- they are all sleazy PR folks and act it).

I think if the subpoena were truly legally problematic for Lively's case, we'd already know it. I think it's irrelevant for the Lively/Baldoni stuff.

Sorry I posted my response in the middle of your text, so posting again…

It’s not necessarily just Jones’ problem if the supboena was issued by Blake’s lawyers and wasn’t fully above board. Why was it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by Blake’s lawyers and why was there no court stamp? What case was it part of, and if it was pre litigation discovery, where’s the court order? If the texts were subpoenaed as part of pending litigation but instead were leaked to the nyt first, can that void the litigation privilege? Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here.

Are you a lawyer? "Courts have rules and a lot of rules seem to have been violated here." What court rules? What violations? What is the legal problem with leaking the texts to the NYT before they were subpoenaed (if that even happened, which is entirely speculative at this point). Did you know sharing texts from a device you own with a news organization is 100% legal? It is.

You are getting worked up about "irregularities" based on internet rumors and some tabloid reports. Is that problems with court documents come to light? No. If there were an actual issue with this subpoena that would impact the Lively action, Wayfarer would have filed a challenge with the court by now. But no such challenge exists because it doesn't matter and can't help them. EXCEPT as a little PR scandal, so they've ginned one up and you are dutifully running around going "what about the subpoena? this subpoena seems like a real problem!"

What is the problem with it? In what way could whatever that problem is negatively impact Lively's ability to use the texts in her case? Follow the thoughts through to their logical conclusion. Let's say for a moment the subpoena was improper, the texts were leaked to the times without a proper subpoena. Then what? Lively requests discovery of the texts which everyone already knows exists. She would not be disallowed from using them. They are evidence that is directly relevant to her claims against Baldoni and Wayfarer, and a court does not punish someone for an improper civil subpoena by disallowing relevant evidence in a civil case. The end.

The subpoena is totally irrelevant.

If Lively’s lawyers faked a subpoena or got a subpoena for pre litigation discovery, but instead of using the subpoenaed evidence to file a lawsuit, they used it for a PR campaign in the NYT, that would be improper use of a subpoena. If there was nothing to see here, we would literally have seen the subpoena by now, pun intended.

OK. Assume the bolded is correct.

What is the outcome of that and how does it negatively impact Lively's case against Baldoni?

I don’t know. That’s why I asked the question, but people here are stuck on last week’s news. The DM story with the new information on the subpoena not being court stamped and filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court is the only news on this today case today, but everyone is still arguing about hurt feelings over who was right about last week’s request for an extension.

The answer is that it does not impact her case. If the subpoena were ruled improper, she could simply request the texts via discovery and be in the exact same situation. I guess if her lawyers filed an improper subpoena they might be censured by that court in some way, but that's a different court and case.

I am a lawyer and I am telling you that the validity of that subpoena has zero impact on Lively's case against Baldoni.

And what about his case against her. If something about the subpoena or the use of a pre litigation subpoena for PR instead of legal reasons was improper, could that bolster any of his arguments against her attempts to seek litigation privilege, or his claims about collusion or malice? It would go to his argument that they never intended to file a complaint.

I find BF’S insistence that BL never intended to file a complaint one of the strangest arguments he makes. The CRD contained a copy of a draft complaint. The CRD is needed to get the right to sue letter.

His initial complaint said she never intended to file a lawsuit because it would open her up to discovery. Then he looked foolish a few days later when he filed her suit. And to this day including in a recent motion he continues to insist she never intended to file suit at the time, because she waited weeks! The right to sue letter is good for a year and her lawyers pointed out she filed suit 11 days after receiving it.

Another strange argument he makes is that the idea of an untraceable internet campaign is so ridiculous on its face that to even put that idea out is in itself actual malice because it couldn't be true (but BL didn't come up with this, it was part of the PR proposal).

I didn’t watch the full 60 minutes Australia video b/c a lot of people say it’s biased in favor of BL (not surprising as that’s been the pattern in mainstream media) but I did watch the part with their bots expert, the ceo of bots sentinel. He says there was bot activity targeting Blake. I looked into him a bit, and he said the same about Amber Heard and then threw a tantrum when Twitter didn’t take him seriously. Another firm did their own research and found the opposite and that the activity targeting Amber couldn’t be traced back to depp. All that to say, I think the untraceable smear campaign is going to be really hard for Blake to prove. Lots of people use bots for all kinds of reasons, usually to drive traffic to their own content and for their own business interests, and it’s going to be hard to prove that people who were not Baldoni was just taking advantage of the criticism against Blake and jumping on the bandwagon. Just look at all the criticism she’s getting now, and they still claim “it’s a smear campaign”.

Amber Heard was definitely the victim of a bot campaign online. I watched it unfold. You don't have to be a bot expert to recognize that one. And *of course* it was Depp. This is all so ludicrous.

Your gut instinct that “of course it was depp” is not enough unfortunately. You need evidence. The key points here are that experts contradict each other all the time and the presence of bots does not mean they were unleashed by your supposed enemy when the internet abounds with opportunists. BL is going to have a hard time proving this. Remember the most viral of all the videos, the little bump video, was completely organic b/c a journalist saw an opening to get clicks.

It is simply logical that the bot attack on Heard was associated with Depp. This isn't court. Logic is good enough for me in this situation.

You want to argue that because some people claimed there wasn't a bot attack on Heard, then we simply can't know if a bot attack is happening, ever. Nope. First, there was definitely a bot account on Heard. This is simply undeniably. A significant amount of the negative commentary about Heard during the trial was traced to foreign bot farms that can be identified as such due to their online activity (posting identical things on hundreds of threads, the timing of these posts, etc.). Amber Heard was the victim of an online bot attack. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is simply not to be taken seriously.

DP I didn't follow Depp/Heard (which sounds like it was so much uglier than this) and I'm curious how they figured out the foreign bot farms, are there any good articles?

Yes, lots. This podcast is a good deep dive: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/listen/who-trolled-amber

But also these, some of which outline the investigation in the podcast and some with independent reporting or discussion of other independent investigations into the online activity around Heard during the trial (sorry some are paywalled and I don't have gift links, but I tried to include some free resources as well):
https://www.yahoo.com/news/amber-heard-trolled-saudi-backed-151407002.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amber-heard-supporters-online-targeted-harrassment-campaign-report/
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-07-19/amber-heard-twitter-abuse-johnny-depp-trial
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2022/07/18/anti-amber-heard-twitter-campaign-one-of-worst-cases-of-cyberbullying-report-says/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/27/amber-heard-trolling-campaign-tortoise-media-johnny-depp/

There's more, but you get the idea. There's really no way to argue that Heard wasn't attacked by bots online at this point. It's quite clear that there was a coordinated campaign to turn public sentiment against her during the trial (and it was very effective).