Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

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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.

[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)

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]

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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.

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?

[Anonymous]

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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.

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.

[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.

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).

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the links, pp!

[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.

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.

Not saying there weren’t bots, just that they weren’t proven to be from depp. Associated with depp and deployed by depp are two very different things. It was a big case and there’s lots of opportunists out there who would want to capitalize.

Similarly it won’t be enough for Blake to prove there were bots used against her, they need the prove Justin’s camp was responsible for them. I don’t think they’ll find that smoking gun b/c I don’t think his team did that. There’s lots of evidence that he’s produced showing his team wasn’t using bots and had observed that they didn’t need to do anything because she was sinking herself. Combined with Wallace’s’ sworn declaration and Blake’s own data showing online sentiment had turned negative against her before he was even hired, and I don’t think she’ll be able to prove there was a smear campaign.

She also tries to suggest Wayfarer set her up to look unserious in the marketing by providing campaign guidance that they didn’t stick to themselves. I think this is one of Lively’s most insincere arguments because she leaves out that Sony and Ryan’s firm handled the marketing, and even though Wayfarer was cut out, Heath still reached out to Sony on premiere day advising that Blake take a different approach to the marketing and incorporate more DV, given the backlash they were seeing. Does that sound like someone who wanted to see Blake and by extension their own movie criticized in the press? I’m sure Heath would’ve given this advice to Blake directly but she was refusing to speak to them. Common sense will have to prevail at some point. There’s too much evidence showing Blake was the problem.

[Anonymous]

It's true a lot of the evidence cuts both ways and it's genuinely hard to say which side would prevail at trial.

But I think it's important to remember this is a civil case and the burden of proof is just preponderance of the evidence -- 50%+1, or more likely than not.

So as an example, for Lively to "prove" that Baldoni/Abel/Nathan were responsible for a bot campaign against here, she doesn't necessarily need an airtight case. She needs to convince jurors that it is more likely than not that a bot campaign against her existed, and that it's more likely than not that Baldoni and his team initiated the campaign. So she doesn't necessarily need a smoking gun, you can make the case with a variety of circumstantial evidence IF it convinces a jury.

As a lawyer, that's one of the things that interests me about the case. I don't think it's clear at all who will prevail, and I find the facts pretty interesting with a lot of conflicting elements. You can make an argument both directions. A big part of me really hopes the case makes it to trial because I'd love to see how this plays out in a classroom with competing testimony and evidence. I am far from ready to take bets on the outcome!

[Anonymous]

Yikes! (From the second link):

“The report highlighted tweets targeting Barlow, among others, with offensive language. In one particularly egregious instance, a photo of a Heard supporter's deceased daughter was appended to a new account, which was then used to target the woman.
….
Attacks against Barlow included a tweet saying she would "look good" crucified."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's true a lot of the evidence cuts both ways and it's genuinely hard to say which side would prevail at trial.

But I think it's important to remember this is a civil case and the burden of proof is just preponderance of the evidence -- 50%+1, or more likely than not.

So as an example, for Lively to "prove" that Baldoni/Abel/Nathan were responsible for a bot campaign against here, she doesn't necessarily need an airtight case. She needs to convince jurors that it is more likely than not that a bot campaign against her existed, and that it's more likely than not that Baldoni and his team initiated the campaign. So she doesn't necessarily need a smoking gun, you can make the case with a variety of circumstantial evidence IF it convinces a jury.

As a lawyer, that's one of the things that interests me about the case. I don't think it's clear at all who will prevail, and I find the facts pretty interesting with a lot of conflicting elements. You can make an argument both directions. A big part of me really hopes the case makes it to trial because I'd love to see how this plays out in a classroom with competing testimony and evidence. I am far from ready to take bets on the outcome!

DP and lawyer. And ditto. And I have to admit I feel that way about the defamation case too. And Palin v NYT starts again today…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's true a lot of the evidence cuts both ways and it's genuinely hard to say which side would prevail at trial.

But I think it's important to remember this is a civil case and the burden of proof is just preponderance of the evidence -- 50%+1, or more likely than not.

So as an example, for Lively to "prove" that Baldoni/Abel/Nathan were responsible for a bot campaign against here, she doesn't necessarily need an airtight case. She needs to convince jurors that it is more likely than not that a bot campaign against her existed, and that it's more likely than not that Baldoni and his team initiated the campaign. So she doesn't necessarily need a smoking gun, you can make the case with a variety of circumstantial evidence IF it convinces a jury.

As a lawyer, that's one of the things that interests me about the case. I don't think it's clear at all who will prevail, and I find the facts pretty interesting with a lot of conflicting elements. You can make an argument both directions. A big part of me really hopes the case makes it to trial because I'd love to see how this plays out in a classroom with competing testimony and evidence. I am far from ready to take bets on the outcome!

DP and lawyer. And ditto. And I have to admit I feel that way about the defamation case too. And Palin v NYT starts again today…

Not a lawyer, but team Baldoni and also believe it can go either way. I hope it doesn’t because I genuinely think that would be a miscarriage of justice, but perhaps the good thing is that it will cause people to scrutinize the law more. I do think 47.1 is being abused in this case and the law probably needs to be amended, and I do think Blake’s team played some shady games with the subpoena and have been forum shopping from the start, just to give a few examples. I think it’s interesting team Blake hates BF so much but doesn’t seem to have a problem with the underhanded practices of Blake’s lawyers. Also think this case is causing people to rethink how much they can trust mainstream media.

Anyway, BF wrote to the court saying Wayfarer will not move for leave to amend before the MTDs are ruled on.

[Anonymous]

Anyway, BF wrote to the court saying Wayfarer will not move for leave to amend before the MTDs are ruled on.

That feels risky.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have Freedman's letter? It's not available for free yet on court listener.

I think he saw the writing on the wall that a bunch of his claims were going to get dismissed with prejudice since he can't support them. But Liman doesn't seem to have a lot of patience and will still probably dismiss them with prejudice since Freedman hasn't even bothered to try.

Can't believe Team Baldoni is still cheerleading Bryan Freedman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have Freedman's letter? It's not available for free yet on court listener.

I think he saw the writing on the wall that a bunch of his claims were going to get dismissed with prejudice since he can't support them. But Liman doesn't seem to have a lot of patience and will still probably dismiss them with prejudice since Freedman hasn't even bothered to try.

Can't believe Team Baldoni is still cheerleading Bryan Freedman.

Ah, providing myself for anyone who is interested (it's up now): https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.178.0.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have Freedman's letter? It's not available for free yet on court listener.

I think he saw the writing on the wall that a bunch of his claims were going to get dismissed with prejudice since he can't support them. But Liman doesn't seem to have a lot of patience and will still probably dismiss them with prejudice since Freedman hasn't even bothered to try.

Can't believe Team Baldoni is still cheerleading Bryan Freedman.

Ah, providing myself for anyone who is interested (it's up now): https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.178.0.pdf

His letter cites one of Liman's cases: The Wayfarer Parties stand behind the operative First Amended
Complaint and are confident that, for the reasons outlined in their opposition briefs (Dkt. Nos. 121,
127, 160, 162), the currently-pending motions to dismiss will be denied. If the Court were to grant
one or more of the motions to any extent, the Wayfarer Parties will move for leave to amend
pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2) and seek a commensurate modification of the Scheduling
Order under the “good cause” standard pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(b)(4) and consistent with the
guidance set forth in Furry Puppet Studio Inc. v. Fall Out Boy, No. 19-CV-2345 (LJL), 2020 WL
4978080 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 24, 2020).

I looked up the case to see if there was any special circumstances there. https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/63d9ead24c7d207dacc2908e

That case makes Liman seem even less flexible than I thought. I don't really understand Wayfarer's strategy here.