Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't really have an opinion yet about the case but what I do know from everything I have read and seen is that I really don't like either Blake or Justin as people. Both are obnoxious.

+1, I am surprised by the posts on here defending Justin like he's some wronged innocent. He sounds like an opportunist who found a nice niche for himself ("I'm a *sensitive* guy who really gets it") and capitalized on it, but it all comes off as very disingenuous to me. Also his book, podcast, and this movie sound like garbage so I can't help but roll my eyes about the comments talking earnestly about how he just want to address toxic masculinity or tell stories of abuse. GMAFB.

But I've also never liked Lively and am totally unsurprised that she's a diva on set and impossible to work with, or that she goes running to her husband to fix things for her when she doesn't get her way. I have also encountered dysfunctional couples like this twice in real life, both in semi-professional contexts where the women would pout and play the victim and then their husbands would come down hard on people but justify it as "protecting" their wives. It's equally annoying as Justin's schtick, and probably ultimately more consequential.

Ugh. I have zero interest in ever paying money to see anything any of these people ever make again. There are lots of talented artists out there who aren't like this.

I don't care for his male feminist schtick and his Man Enough book sounds boring. But I do believe he was railroaded by two powerful people and that he has very credible rebuttals for all of Blake's sexual harassment claims. I think you're conflating the comments here with a Justin Baldoni subreddit or something, because I haven't seen anything here really indicating we're legitimate fans of his. It's really more anti-Lively here than pro-Justin.

I'm the PP and I've only read about that s conflict here. There have definitely been posts on here that are very "pro-Justin" and painting him as some wonderful person. I don't even get the posts painting him as a victim, tbh. I don't think Lively is a victim either. I think they are both narcissistic, grating people who made a crappy movie together and got embroiled in a pissing match. I think Lively comes off worse because of Reynolds and because she had more leverage. But I don't view either as a victim.

I think he’s a fake and unlikable person. But for Blake to try and destroy him is what I think enrages a lot of people who see the power imbalance and also see what kind of person she is through all the interviews she’s done where she has appeared condescending (you have a cute bump) and clueless (wear your florals) and cruel (pointing out thaf Leighton was born in a cage). This does not mean that powerful women who happen to be dumb and unkind cannot be victims of sexual harassment—they just have to have strong evidence.

I will say though, if Jennifer Lawrence said she was sexually harassed I would believe her without evidence because I think she has character and integrity.

I disagree entirely. They don’t need particularly strong evidence which is what you’re perhaps unintentionally suggesting. That’s not what’s up here.

There is not only NO evidence that she was harassed, but rather there is abundant evidence that she lied about all of it. This isn’t about believing JLaw but not tacky Khaleesi because of a parasocial relationship. Lively has no evidence at all that anything she has said is within a reasonable distance to truth. She lied. She is a liar. Why are people so uncomfortable with that? She is the only accuser I’ve ever read of in my life who I know to be lying about this kind of thing - I always default to believing accusers so the fact that this man has a wealth of evidence backing him is stunning. She does not have her view and he his. She literally lied ENTIRELY about the “kissing my neck and saying it smells so good” scene. We saw it ultimately in full. She lied. Like a liar.

Blake Lively is in no way being held to a high standard. She lied her ass off in every way conceivable about all of this.

Can you outline where she lied? So far most of it strikes me as being in the realm of "different interpretations of the same or similar facts."

Like the video. Do I consider that sexual harassment? Not really. But can I kind of see how from her perspective, she was uncomfortable and felt like he was being inappropriate when he made the comment about her smelling good? Yes, I can see how someone who was perhaps already primed to dislike him and was generally uncomfortable being in close proximity to him would feel that he crossed a line there. And actually the video shows her specifically objecting to what he says in the moment, backing up her claim that she felt uncomfortable and that she thought it was over the line. Even if I don't agree with her interpretation, I don't read that as "lying."

Are there other examples where he's come out with evidence that directly contradicts specific claims? I was reading most of the complaints at one point but it's too much and I just want a summary. If she has been shown to have lied, can someone just do a point-counterpoint of things he's proven that she lied about?

[Anonymous]

Someone already outlined where she lied multiple times in this. Or you can go read the amended complaint to see it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Regarding the Reddit thread: There’s no way that someone on the outside could have just made all that up. It lines up too perfectly, right down to the “sexy” comment, the TS song stuff, the NYT angle, and the Sony execs just rolling over.

It’s also interesting that that person who posted the tea, further down in the thread, says the gist of it was that people thought BL had blown stuff out of proportion and taken stuff out of context (in regard to JB harrassing her).

If you actually look at the comments by the OP who made the thread, they outright are saying Blake is as bad if not worse than Baldoni.
I'm fairly sure that reddit post was cited in Lively's legal complaint as an example of one of the paid reddit army. It was posted multiple times. One example linked in another thread had it in the comments of another topic with a date that was a few days after the infamous texts.

It may or may not be a paid post but that would be an alternative explanation.

The timing of the post makes this feel like a possible explanation. The person clearly has inside info from the set. But it's tilted toward Baldoni at a time when others involved with the production were backing Lively (unfollowing Baldoni, refusing to do press with him). I am sure there were a spectrum of attitudes about the rift in set and I'm also sure a lot of people who work with Lively don't like her (this is documented). But the timing of this specific post which seems custom designed to provide a refutation of the harassment rumors, and the fact it was posted and reposted, and knowing Baldoni's people hired Jed Wallace... it makes me skeptical it's authentic. Even though it's entirely possible some or even all of its details are correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain how Blake even has a career? She can’t act, can’t produce, can’t direct, and is 15 years past her “eye candy” prime. Imagine this scheming talentless middle aged woman acting like a diva on set and trying to steal control of your film. This man handled himself exceptionally well, far more professional than I would have been.

lol this is why everyone has to keep making posts about how you all just want to hate women

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone already outlined where she lied multiple times in this. Or you can go read the amended complaint to see it.

Can you point me to the page in the thread then? I'm happy to read through it myself but I can't find anything like that on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Does anything change if it can be proven all of BL’s claims were not made with clean hands?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This is a tale as old as time. A he said she said, the he is a prominent hollywood player who hires a vicious PR firm, the internet rips the woman apart. Zero attempts to look at the situation from both sides. Please provide a single example where in a contentious dispute between a man and a woman in hollywood the woman is believed and the man is injured.

It only happens when someone is SUCH a predator that they assault SO many women that it can't be explained away (weinstein/cosby). And even then they end up getting out of jail!

Prediction: this turns into a 150 page thread talking about what a see you next tuesday you all think she is. Just like all the other multi hundred long page threads in this forum. There isn't one about a man though! It's ALWAYS about the woman. Examine your ingrained misogyny people.

Second prediction: I get a bunch of people replying to me yelling about Blake being awful and Baldoni being her victim and I just blindly take the woman's side.

I'll just get in front of all of those and tell you what I would say in response. These situations are almost always complex with different levels of power at play (in this case, while Lively and Reynolds have significantly higher household name recognition, Baldoni has extremely powerful industry connections, so is not the david to their goliath). And I believe that almost every celebrity is somewhat egotistical/narcissistic almost by the nature of the gig. Therefore it is my belief that there is almost NEVER a party completely innocent here. There is always blame to be found on both sides because it is almost always giant egos fighting with each other. But here, there is never nuance, it is always the woman sucks and the poor man we had a crush on 10 years ago because he was hot in that movie that one time is innocent.

lol at Baldoni being considered a Hollywood power player with "extremely powerful industry connections." Baldoni is backed by a billionaire with no ties to Hollywood. That matters, and is why Blake and Ryan were able to throw around their weight so much. You seem to acknowledge the complicated dynamics here yet are getting so many basic things wrong.

Thanks for the bolded, exactly. While blake attended the film with other cast members, baldoni attended with sony execs. He has a whole production studio with deep deep pockets. I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to further expound upon that.

Yeah, he's so powerful that he was sent to the basement during his own premiere.

Yeah because he went against Sony’s marketing plan for the film that he was committed to. Sony explicitly wanted the marketing in line with how Blake and the rest of the cast promoted it. He went rogue and engaged with the DV themes, which won him internet brownie points but put him on the outs with Sony.

Sony overruled Justin at every turn in favor of Blake, even going so far as giving her the power of final cut, but Blake was powerless to push back on its marketing guidelines? That makes *no* sense.

DP but that's a twisting of Lively's arguments there. Lively didn't want to push back on the marketing guidelines. She agreed with them. She was happy to promote the movie as Sony requested, as a "girls night out" empowerment story and an excuse to break out "your florals."

Her complaint alleges that Baldoni also agreed to that marketing plan (and it was up to Sony to outline a marketing plan and part of the distribution agreement with Wayfarer that Sony would set the marketing tone because they were footing the bill for it) but then he did an end-run around it by insisting on talking up the domestic violence angle. And the documents/texts from his PR agency reveal that this was an intentional tactic to make Lively look stupid and unserious -- they knew if Lively followed Sony's marketing angle and Baldoni instead talked about the movie as a serious look at DV (which, for the record, it isn't), he would look like the feminist advocate for DV survivors and she'd look stupid. Which she did.

Lively's not saying it's unfair Baldoni got to talk about DV and she didn't. She's saying that Baldoni violated the marketing plan by talking about DV and that he did so as part of a coordinated PR attack on Lively.

I'll have to see for myself if Baldoni agreed to the marketing plan given the lies I'm seeing circulating about Blake's complaint on this forum (e.g. this notion that was given "explicit" instructions from Sony to promote it in a light way, even though they were just guidelines). Regardless, Justin Baldoni's public persona revolves around being a male feminist and he asked Sony they had to earmark 1% of the proceeds to survivors of domestic abuse. If he indeed went rogue, I feel like it would be so easy to prove he did it because he wanted to show support for DV victims (whether or not you think he's genuine) instead of it being part of a nefarious plot to bring about Blake's downfall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain how Blake even has a career? She can’t act, can’t produce, can’t direct, and is 15 years past her “eye candy” prime. Imagine this scheming talentless middle aged woman acting like a diva on set and trying to steal control of your film. This man handled himself exceptionally well, far more professional than I would have been.

lol this is why everyone has to keep making posts about how you all just want to hate women

I must have been sick the day BL was agreed to be the representation of all women kind.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Personally of the belief that Blake told Ryan same stuff that is in the complaint, and I don’t think any of it is true. He’s finding out with the rest of us. For the sake of their children, hope their marriage is salvagable.

This, but I do not think they will stay together. This will bruise Ryan’s ego so intensely I predict they will divorce. I listened to the heather mcdonald juicy scoop podcast and her theory is Blake and JB were vibing, flirting, whatever beyond what two married people should be doing and Ryan caught wind of it and Blake deflected claiming sexual harassment. Ryan filed by anger and power and narcissism really ran with this and the law suit was filed. I hope the truth comes out. Either way for the fragile egos or Blake and Ryan, I think they will be destroyed and the marriage is over. I’m glad JB is not backing down.

Call me when the lawyers and journalists are back and not the pathetic podcast + TikTok listeners with no brain

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This is a tale as old as time. A he said she said, the he is a prominent hollywood player who hires a vicious PR firm, the internet rips the woman apart. Zero attempts to look at the situation from both sides. Please provide a single example where in a contentious dispute between a man and a woman in hollywood the woman is believed and the man is injured.

It only happens when someone is SUCH a predator that they assault SO many women that it can't be explained away (weinstein/cosby). And even then they end up getting out of jail!

Prediction: this turns into a 150 page thread talking about what a see you next tuesday you all think she is. Just like all the other multi hundred long page threads in this forum. There isn't one about a man though! It's ALWAYS about the woman. Examine your ingrained misogyny people.

Second prediction: I get a bunch of people replying to me yelling about Blake being awful and Baldoni being her victim and I just blindly take the woman's side.

I'll just get in front of all of those and tell you what I would say in response. These situations are almost always complex with different levels of power at play (in this case, while Lively and Reynolds have significantly higher household name recognition, Baldoni has extremely powerful industry connections, so is not the david to their goliath). And I believe that almost every celebrity is somewhat egotistical/narcissistic almost by the nature of the gig. Therefore it is my belief that there is almost NEVER a party completely innocent here. There is always blame to be found on both sides because it is almost always giant egos fighting with each other. But here, there is never nuance, it is always the woman sucks and the poor man we had a crush on 10 years ago because he was hot in that movie that one time is innocent.

lol at Baldoni being considered a Hollywood power player with "extremely powerful industry connections." Baldoni is backed by a billionaire with no ties to Hollywood. That matters, and is why Blake and Ryan were able to throw around their weight so much. You seem to acknowledge the complicated dynamics here yet are getting so many basic things wrong.

Thanks for the bolded, exactly. While blake attended the film with other cast members, baldoni attended with sony execs. He has a whole production studio with deep deep pockets. I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to further expound upon that.

Yeah, he's so powerful that he was sent to the basement during his own premiere.

Yeah because he went against Sony’s marketing plan for the film that he was committed to. Sony explicitly wanted the marketing in line with how Blake and the rest of the cast promoted it. He went rogue and engaged with the DV themes, which won him internet brownie points but put him on the outs with Sony.

Sony overruled Justin at every turn in favor of Blake, even going so far as giving her the power of final cut, but Blake was powerless to push back on its marketing guidelines? That makes *no* sense.

DP but that's a twisting of Lively's arguments there. Lively didn't want to push back on the marketing guidelines. She agreed with them. She was happy to promote the movie as Sony requested, as a "girls night out" empowerment story and an excuse to break out "your florals."

Her complaint alleges that Baldoni also agreed to that marketing plan (and it was up to Sony to outline a marketing plan and part of the distribution agreement with Wayfarer that Sony would set the marketing tone because they were footing the bill for it) but then he did an end-run around it by insisting on talking up the domestic violence angle. And the documents/texts from his PR agency reveal that this was an intentional tactic to make Lively look stupid and unserious -- they knew if Lively followed Sony's marketing angle and Baldoni instead talked about the movie as a serious look at DV (which, for the record, it isn't), he would look like the feminist advocate for DV survivors and she'd look stupid. Which she did.

Lively's not saying it's unfair Baldoni got to talk about DV and she didn't. She's saying that Baldoni violated the marketing plan by talking about DV and that he did so as part of a coordinated PR attack on Lively.

I'll have to see for myself if Baldoni agreed to the marketing plan given the lies I'm seeing circulating about Blake's complaint on this forum (e.g. this notion that was given "explicit" instructions from Sony to promote it in a light way, even though they were just guidelines). Regardless, Justin Baldoni's public persona revolves around being a male feminist and he asked Sony they had to earmark 1% of the proceeds to survivors of domestic abuse. If he indeed went rogue, I feel like it would be so easy to prove he did it because he wanted to show support for DV victims (whether or not you think he's genuine) instead of it being part of a nefarious plot to bring about Blake's downfall.

This is how Sony directed the cast to talk about the film in the Marketing Plan (this is from Exhibit C of Lively's complaint)j. Emphasis is mine:

"WHAT TO AVOID
Focus more on Lily’s strength and resilience as opposed to describing the film as a story about domestic violence. Empowerment is not just about standing up to adversity, but also about having the power to overcome within oneself and grow from it and developing agency to shape the future.
Avoid describing the film as a love story or love triangle – it’s the story of Lily learning how to take agency of her future.
Avoid talking about this film that makes it feel sad or heavy – it’s a story of hope.
Avoid talking about the film being representative of every woman’s story. There are many stories of domestic violence, and this is just one perspective that is inspired by Colleen Hoover’s own experiences growing up."

Lively's allegation is that Baldoni intentionally deviated from this plan by focusing on domestic violence in his interviews and highlighting DV survivors who had reached out to him, posting their notes to him on his social media and emphasizing the "importance" of the movie as a DV narrative.

Lively also alleges that this was done to make it looks as though Baldoni was choosing to distance himself from the cast intentionally because he disagreed with their [Sony-sanctioned] promotion of the film. I find that claim to be a stretch, but if Baldoni signed a contract that he would follow Sony's marketing plan including the above, it does seem that he intentionally deviated from it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This is a tale as old as time. A he said she said, the he is a prominent hollywood player who hires a vicious PR firm, the internet rips the woman apart. Zero attempts to look at the situation from both sides. Please provide a single example where in a contentious dispute between a man and a woman in hollywood the woman is believed and the man is injured.

It only happens when someone is SUCH a predator that they assault SO many women that it can't be explained away (weinstein/cosby). And even then they end up getting out of jail!

Prediction: this turns into a 150 page thread talking about what a see you next tuesday you all think she is. Just like all the other multi hundred long page threads in this forum. There isn't one about a man though! It's ALWAYS about the woman. Examine your ingrained misogyny people.

Second prediction: I get a bunch of people replying to me yelling about Blake being awful and Baldoni being her victim and I just blindly take the woman's side.

I'll just get in front of all of those and tell you what I would say in response. These situations are almost always complex with different levels of power at play (in this case, while Lively and Reynolds have significantly higher household name recognition, Baldoni has extremely powerful industry connections, so is not the david to their goliath). And I believe that almost every celebrity is somewhat egotistical/narcissistic almost by the nature of the gig. Therefore it is my belief that there is almost NEVER a party completely innocent here. There is always blame to be found on both sides because it is almost always giant egos fighting with each other. But here, there is never nuance, it is always the woman sucks and the poor man we had a crush on 10 years ago because he was hot in that movie that one time is innocent.

lol at Baldoni being considered a Hollywood power player with "extremely powerful industry connections." Baldoni is backed by a billionaire with no ties to Hollywood. That matters, and is why Blake and Ryan were able to throw around their weight so much. You seem to acknowledge the complicated dynamics here yet are getting so many basic things wrong.

Thanks for the bolded, exactly. While blake attended the film with other cast members, baldoni attended with sony execs. He has a whole production studio with deep deep pockets. I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to further expound upon that.

Yeah, he's so powerful that he was sent to the basement during his own premiere.

Yeah because he went against Sony’s marketing plan for the film that he was committed to. Sony explicitly wanted the marketing in line with how Blake and the rest of the cast promoted it. He went rogue and engaged with the DV themes, which won him internet brownie points but put him on the outs with Sony.

Sony overruled Justin at every turn in favor of Blake, even going so far as giving her the power of final cut, but Blake was powerless to push back on its marketing guidelines? That makes *no* sense.

DP but that's a twisting of Lively's arguments there. Lively didn't want to push back on the marketing guidelines. She agreed with them. She was happy to promote the movie as Sony requested, as a "girls night out" empowerment story and an excuse to break out "your florals."

Her complaint alleges that Baldoni also agreed to that marketing plan (and it was up to Sony to outline a marketing plan and part of the distribution agreement with Wayfarer that Sony would set the marketing tone because they were footing the bill for it) but then he did an end-run around it by insisting on talking up the domestic violence angle. And the documents/texts from his PR agency reveal that this was an intentional tactic to make Lively look stupid and unserious -- they knew if Lively followed Sony's marketing angle and Baldoni instead talked about the movie as a serious look at DV (which, for the record, it isn't), he would look like the feminist advocate for DV survivors and she'd look stupid. Which she did.

Lively's not saying it's unfair Baldoni got to talk about DV and she didn't. She's saying that Baldoni violated the marketing plan by talking about DV and that he did so as part of a coordinated PR attack on Lively.

The gulf between the way Justin and Blake promoted it was still, at the very least, some of Blake's fault. Maybe I'd buy into this argument if Justin focused on DV, while Blake just promoted it normally and gave vague platitudes about resilience. The issue is Justin focused on DV AND Blake promoted it frivolously.

So maybe Justin pivots and addresses it seriously, OK. But then we're arguing in circles because we come back to the fact that Blake did not need to promote her companies alongside a movie about domestic abuse, which includes an alcohol company, use cutesy puns for the drinks, and dismiss questions about survivors approaching her about the issue of DV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't really have an opinion yet about the case but what I do know from everything I have read and seen is that I really don't like either Blake or Justin as people. Both are obnoxious.

How is he obnoxious?

This story is exactly like Bad Art Friend. Smug mugs who came to it in December decided he’s guilty of stuff he quite evidently never ever did. His Dawn-like sincerity is a flaw against Lively’s polished like Sonya’s gross turd character. At least it explains to me why he can’t settle, and to be grateful from afar that his film partners have the money to push this hard.

His male feminist shtick, him being fine playing a Latino guy for years when he is a white Italian, hiring Johnny Depp’s crisis PR group, the verified texts from him participating in the smear campaign, plus deeply religious people inherently raise red flags for most especially a religion like balahai that people in US at least are not super familiar with. They’re both insufferable

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:In court, will the NYTimes have to reveal when they started working on the article? What other specific things can we expect to come to light?

If justin’s case survives a MTD, yes, they will. I suspect that the NYT might file an anti SLAPP motion, but I’m not sure. My guess is justin’s case will survive those early motions and discovery will begin. And yes, the NYT will have to show timing and the internal process that led to the story being published, what they did to corroborate her story, what they did and didn’t do and said about seeking the other side’s perspective, etc.

I’m fairly alone on this thread on thinking that Justin has a real case against the NYT. This was an explosive story. I don’t think it will be hard to show they had a real confirmation bias going in to this story, their MeToo journalist wanted to fit this into another metoo framework with a PR twist, and they ignored proper journalism standards… and there was significant harm to people, including people who are arguably private figures.

But it’s also been a very wise PR move as well, and I’m sure it’s unsettled the Times and that reporter.

I don’t disagree that this will beat a MTD unless the judge has a very restrictive take on the showing needed for actual malice. but “confirmation bias” isn’t a grounds to show actual bias, and it’s not clear that “proper journalism standards” even exist such to show that they were recklessly or intentionally violated.

Yes, there are journalistic standards that publications like the Times follow. They certainly have internal rules of the road that they are supposed to follow. The Times even used to have a ‘standards’ editor as a separate role. Things like getting comment, how many sources to use and what sort of info is needed to verify statements, whether they can run a story with only off the record sources, that sort of thing. I suspect they relaxed them here, hoping they could hide behind this being a published complaint (and therefore a ‘fair report’ which gives them some protections). That’s why they came out hard and fast in a statement to respond to the allegation that they had the complaint early and that this was collaborative with BL.

These aren’t legal standards, of course. But if this gets to a jury, the Plaintiffs will introduce evidence showing how sloppy and different from usual standards this journalistic process was, how they might have willfully ignored red flags in pursuit of a juicy angle, etc. All of this will be used to show state of mind- eg whether they were negligent or showed a reckless disregard for the truth.

it would take a LOT to prove those are hard & fast standards that the Times violated here, such that it constitutes recklessness. Because a) there are no clear standards on things like how long to give for comment and b) it’s not even clear the Times would have violated that.

The law makes this very hard for a good reason. If journalists can be sued by public figures too easily then their ability to report (and make mistakes) would be severely curtailed and the public would suffer.

It really wouldn’t be that hard to show…

of course it would be hard to show. It would be extremely hard to show and even if Baldoni puts 10 journalism professors on the record, there would still be a mountain of contradictory evidence. I’m not even sure he beats MTD on actual malice (although I have not combed through the latest.)

It really really won’t be that hard and this is to a jury. They aren’t super precise. And the NYT will likely have written parameters and there will likely be drafts, emails and other materials they are forced to turn over with questions or concerns set out. These are writers and media people- they tend to communicate and that can work against them in these types of cases. See the Fox Old Dominion case where texts sunk them to close to a billion dollar settlement. Fox also claimed that they were protected, they were going to fight it all the way, they were just reporting on a matter of public concern, blah blah.

this case is NOTHING like the Fox Dominion case. there’s zero evidence even alleged that is similar. I don’t know how much background you have in journalism or 1A but you really are off base. That of course doesn’t mean a jury could make a crazy decision but I’m not sure the verdict would stand and I’m not even sure this passes MTD.

Rolling my eyes hard at your repeated reference to ‘1A’. Sorry, no insider uses that expression which is showing me you don’t have nearly the knowledge base in this area of the law you think you do. OF COURSE this case isn’t exactly like the Fox case- in some ways, the Fox case was *better* for Fox- at the beginning at least bc voter fraud and the veracity of the election was clearly a significant matter of public interest for them to report on, including what other people were claiming about a matter of great import. Yet Old Dominion survived a MTD. Can’t really say that about a petty onset scrap between a B list actress and an unknown director. Why the heck was the Times reporting on this crap in the first place? It’s off brand, other than making it into a bigger metoo story.

But my point was that discovery can sink cases for media Defendants bc there tends to be a decent amount of written materials and chatter and internal debate on stories like this, and it typically doesn’t help defendants, especially when used by a crafty Ps attorney, which Bryan Freedman is showing himself to be.

So let’s play this out, and let’s say the jury decides for Ps- a ‘crazy decision’ as you said (which I don’t agree with necessarily but whatever). You think the NYT wants to appeal based on NYT v Sullivan and see what happens there? Have you not noticed the recent strange media settlements? Think about it. It’s a very weird time for the media, and because of some of these factors, including how skilled Bryan Freedman seems to be and how much PR and coverage there is, my belief is that this case has a decent chance.

True the first amendment has nothing to do with defamation lol.

Obviously the legal and media landscape are changing quickly but you keep on acting like there is likely to be ANYTHING similar to what Fox did - and I do not believe it has been alleged and nor will it come out in discovery.

The defamation defense bar does not refer to themselves as ‘1A’ attorneys. Thats my point. It is a fairly small world, which you clearly do not know well, yet you keep chiming in like you’re an expert.

And I never said Fox and the NYT are the same, rather that discovery often gets messy and risky for media defendants because they tend to WRITE everything down.

true, Floyd Abrams never discussed the First Amendment 🤡

anyway I never said I was a defamation defense attorney? I don’t believe you are either. If you are I invite you to write a long post showing how Baldoni will show the same types of facts as alleged in the Dominion cases. “maybe he will dig up a red flag that the jury maybe will construe against the NYT” is not really persuasive.

Sigh. You’re hopeless in digging in when you don’t know, and then trying to twist my words. Floyd Abrams hasn’t been on the defense scene in any real way for years. I get that you took a law class and know his name. Besides, I was making fun of your short hand, 1A. It’s just not an acronym that’s used.

true, only a member of the very small “defense scene” can competently analyze the case; and using an acronym you dislike shows that my opinion is worthless. Mmm hmm.

still waiting for your actual analysis of the dominion v Baldoni complaints. I don’t think Baldoni has even alleged enough to get to discovery.

Defense BAR. Not defense ‘scene’. And yes, your use of strange acronyms and reference to non practicing attorneys leads me to believe you don’t know this area of the law very well. Which is fine. I don’t know the SH side of things that well. The difference is that most people admit what they don’t know. You are amusing in that you act like you are an expert when you’re clearly not.

I think B will get discovery, but sure, let’s wait and see.

Sweetie you were the one who said “defense scene,” not me. And despite your claim to be a member of the elite corps of the defense BAR, you still have done zero to actually detail what in the Baldoni complaint parallels Dominion or even Palin, and what plausibly pleads all the necessary elements especially actual malice.

Meanwhile I have yet to see a single article covering this story that quotes any lawyer saying the claim is strong. Maybe you saw one?

This entire DCUM chain started because of a lawyer on a podcast saying the NYT had risk in this case…

People who know this area of the law well tend to love the NYT, and most aren’t going to run to bet against it. And it’s not like people other than legal nerds care about this issue that much in the first place. But we’ll see what legal analysis comes out as this progresses. I’d love to read it.

I already posted her TikTok here, but I swear I'm not her or her PR person: I recommend https://www.tiktok.com/@notactuallygolden

I don’t know why you keep posting her, as a lawyer, I don’t find her analysis that great.

Bumping this because I'd love an answer as to why she sucks. Just trying to educate myself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone already outlined where she lied multiple times in this. Or you can go read the amended complaint to see it.

This, and it appears the Blake folks are back to trying to bait and close down the thread. Let’s keep the discussion to the legal cases and ignore the posts where people think being “uncomfortable” provides a cause of action.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't really have an opinion yet about the case but what I do know from everything I have read and seen is that I really don't like either Blake or Justin as people. Both are obnoxious.

How is he obnoxious?

This story is exactly like Bad Art Friend. Smug mugs who came to it in December decided he’s guilty of stuff he quite evidently never ever did. His Dawn-like sincerity is a flaw against Lively’s polished like Sonya’s gross turd character. At least it explains to me why he can’t settle, and to be grateful from afar that his film partners have the money to push this hard.

His male feminist shtick, him being fine playing a Latino guy for years when he is a white Italian, hiring Johnny Depp’s crisis PR group, the verified texts from him participating in the smear campaign, plus deeply religious people inherently raise red flags for most especially a religion like balahai that people in US at least are not super familiar with. They’re both insufferable

I’m the person you’re trying this with and I’m Latina. He did not pull a Hilaria Baldwin. He’s tight with everyone from Jane the Virgin, apparently.

The way he’s been and is being demonized here is disheartening. What did he do wrong again?