Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

I really want the Times to face consequences, despite it being a hail mary, because of how slimy Megan Twohey was. This idea that they reviewed thousands of pages in preparation for the report really lent Blake's claims a lot of credence. BUT, I do wonder how much difference the Times made in this case. Say they refuse to cover it. Blake still leaks her complaint to outlets, and they report it in a more straightforward way. Justin's reputation is still damaged, no?

[Anonymous]

Taylor swift has been subpoenaed. Her rep gave a looong statement to TMZ. The short of it is Taylor is mad. Never stepped foot on set, never made any decisions, licensed one song and didn’t even see the movie until weeks and weeks after it premiered (ouch).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Taylor swift has been subpoenaed. Her rep gave a looong statement to TMZ. The short of it is Taylor is mad. Never stepped foot on set, never made any decisions, licensed one song and didn’t even see the movie until weeks and weeks after it premiered (ouch).

lol, so did Blake Lively lie to everyone that Taylor helped cast Isabela Ferrer? Pathetic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Taylor swift has been subpoenaed. Her rep gave a looong statement to TMZ. The short of it is Taylor is mad. Never stepped foot on set, never made any decisions, licensed one song and didn’t even see the movie until weeks and weeks after it premiered (ouch).

She should be mad, but at Baldoni and Freedman, not Blake. Freedman is trying to harass and annoy Blake into settling with stuff like issuing subpoenas on her friends who have no relevance to the case.

There is no world in which the facts of this case give rise to Taylor Swift needing to be deposed. It's a PR stunt by Freedman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taylor swift has been subpoenaed. Her rep gave a looong statement to TMZ. The short of it is Taylor is mad. Never stepped foot on set, never made any decisions, licensed one song and didn’t even see the movie until weeks and weeks after it premiered (ouch).

She should be mad, but at Baldoni and Freedman, not Blake. Freedman is trying to harass and annoy Blake into settling with stuff like issuing subpoenas on her friends who have no relevance to the case.

There is no world in which the facts of this case give rise to Taylor Swift needing to be deposed. It's a PR stunt by Freedman.

She's probably annoyed at everyone, including Blake for constantly invoking her. Her involvement is absolutely relevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taylor swift has been subpoenaed. Her rep gave a looong statement to TMZ. The short of it is Taylor is mad. Never stepped foot on set, never made any decisions, licensed one song and didn’t even see the movie until weeks and weeks after it premiered (ouch).

She should be mad, but at Baldoni and Freedman, not Blake. Freedman is trying to harass and annoy Blake into settling with stuff like issuing subpoenas on her friends who have no relevance to the case.

There is no world in which the facts of this case give rise to Taylor Swift needing to be deposed. It's a PR stunt by Freedman. [/quote

That’s delulu talk. The dragon text, the meeting at the penthouse, allegedly getting the composer fired. Sorry but Blake is the reason Taylor is being subpoenaed. Even Taylor knows this, that’s why she’s not speaking to Blake.

[Anonymous]

One other thing that KatOrtega has noted is that Bryan Freedman is going to be a very, very busy boy over the next several months. His LA firm only has 20 attorneys, plus the 40 at the NY firm. He sometimes works with Mark Geragos but that firm is busy with the Diddy trial. And yet over the next few months, Freedman needs to deal with Lively discovery, a CA Court of Appeals brief for Rachel Leviss, oral arguments for same, an FKA Twigs trial this fall, an ethics hearing for Tom Sandoval (where Freedman and someone else reportedly told Sandoval he was missing a deadline although Sandoval had asked for an extension due to the fact that his lawyer had been let go), and an arbitration for Faith Stower. This is besides potential depositions and/or hearing on the MTDs in the Lively case, as well as other discovery disputes that arise here.

Meanwhile, Lively does not have this problem, given the hundreds of attorneys at Quinn Emmanuel -- and they are not asking for extensions anymore, they are plowing through and (apparently) meeting deadlines, unlike Freedman.

So I'm curious to see how things go for Freedman over the next few months and I eagerly await karma to catch up with him, although I'm not holding my breath yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One other thing that KatOrtega has noted is that Bryan Freedman is going to be a very, very busy boy over the next several months. His LA firm only has 20 attorneys, plus the 40 at the NY firm. He sometimes works with Mark Geragos but that firm is busy with the Diddy trial. And yet over the next few months, Freedman needs to deal with Lively discovery, a CA Court of Appeals brief for Rachel Leviss, oral arguments for same, an FKA Twigs trial this fall, an ethics hearing for Tom Sandoval (where Freedman and someone else reportedly told Sandoval he was missing a deadline although Sandoval had asked for an extension due to the fact that his lawyer had been let go), and an arbitration for Faith Stower. This is besides potential depositions and/or hearing on the MTDs in the Lively case, as well as other discovery disputes that arise here.

Meanwhile, Lively does not have this problem, given the hundreds of attorneys at Quinn Emmanuel -- and they are not asking for extensions anymore, they are plowing through and (apparently) meeting deadlines, unlike Freedman.

So I'm curious to see how things go for Freedman over the next few months and I eagerly await karma to catch up with him, although I'm not holding my breath yet.

Quinn Emmanuel? Her lawyers are from Wilkie and Manatt. Gottlieb also is plenty busy with the Drake case, another one destined to fail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One other thing that KatOrtega has noted is that Bryan Freedman is going to be a very, very busy boy over the next several months. His LA firm only has 20 attorneys, plus the 40 at the NY firm. He sometimes works with Mark Geragos but that firm is busy with the Diddy trial. And yet over the next few months, Freedman needs to deal with Lively discovery, a CA Court of Appeals brief for Rachel Leviss, oral arguments for same, an FKA Twigs trial this fall, an ethics hearing for Tom Sandoval (where Freedman and someone else reportedly told Sandoval he was missing a deadline although Sandoval had asked for an extension due to the fact that his lawyer had been let go), and an arbitration for Faith Stower. This is besides potential depositions and/or hearing on the MTDs in the Lively case, as well as other discovery disputes that arise here.

Meanwhile, Lively does not have this problem, given the hundreds of attorneys at Quinn Emmanuel -- and they are not asking for extensions anymore, they are plowing through and (apparently) meeting deadlines, unlike Freedman.

So I'm curious to see how things go for Freedman over the next few months and I eagerly await karma to catch up with him, although I'm not holding my breath yet.

I frequent the IEWU sub and have to constantly see Kat Ortega's breathless ramblings about Freedman, and now you have to summarize what she says and drag it over here. No thanks.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I really don't get the personal animus shown here towards Freedman. Gottlieb has been far more nasty in his pleadings, and refusing to agree to a first request for an extension is not normal practice. Being a bit of a blowhard is pretty much a character trait for plaintiff attorneys and will be something the judge sees day in and day out. It certainly isn't something that will "turn him against" Freedman as one poster hopes.

I wouldn't say I have "personal" animus towards Freedman, but as a lawyer I've known many like him and it's one of the reasons I left litigation. It is not a style or personality type I enjoy, so I'm predisposed to dislike him. Also early in following this case, I read this profile of him (from last summer), and there's a lot of details in there that give me the ick:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/entertainment-lawyer-bryan-freedman-hollywood-dark-knight-1235919993/

I do think he's an effective lawyer for the kind of cases he takes on and I don't think he's dumb. But I cannot stand his approach to the media and I find his personality grating.

I also happened to have a lot of respect for Gottlieb based on some of his prior pro bono work (for instance defending GA poll workers against attacks from Giuliani after the 2020 election) and his style is preferable to me -- more restrained and professional IMO.

I just don't enjoy bombastic lawyers unless they are funny. Freedman is a specific kind of litigator, a media-savvy pitbull. I've known others like him. It is effective but I don't enjoy it. That's all.

DP, who listened to the PO hearing, who doesn’t like Freedman and makes somewhat hostile posts about him here. I have worked with (and against) other attorneys who are openly hostile to opposing counsel from the starting point (rather than having such a take on opposing counsel be earned over time due to dirty tricks or whatever), and it’s never good. These have always been the worst attorneys to deal with in my career and have been uniformly terrible people. Their egos cannot be appeased and even when they are on your side, they are impossible to work with.

The other thing I’ve heard about Freedman specifically is that he files things prematurely before he has the facts to back them up, expecting to gain those facts through discovery. That’s not the way complaints are supposed to work — you’re supposed to have the basics to support your claim in hand before filing. You shouldn’t be signing court filings that are guesses. But he doesn’t see a problem with that.

PP here and one of my issues with Freedman is that he has a history of doing things that I think are unethical with respect to the media. For instance in that article I linked to, they mention a case he handled against Bravo where he went on TMZ and waived around a document with the title "Slave Contract," implying that this was one of the contracts with Bravo at issue in his case. Later it turned out that was a prop contract that had nothing to do with the case. When I practiced, I encountered lawyers like this who have very loose relationships with truth and ethics and it's just so far from who I am as a person and a lawyer, it really drove me crazy. There is a whole school of thought in litigation that it's okay to pushed the boundaries of professional or personal ethics in order to zealously advocate for your client, he's far from alone in this. I dislike it and it wore me down over time and eventually I just decided I didn't want to spend so much of my professional life engaged in conflict with people who had such a different approach to me.

Lawyers disagree on this. I have old colleagues I like and respect who are not bothered by this stuff. Everyone is different. But for me, Freedman crosses a line. I feel similarly about his "Exhibit A" (which is just clearly a violation of procedural rules and is almost certainly going to be stricken at some point) and about some of the "leaks" or "receipts" Freedman has produced that I think are intentionally misleading.

You don’t seem cut out for litigation and that is reflected in your analysis.

Not being "cut out for" the kind of litigation where people lie about "slave contracts" to the press in order to undercut the opposition is a good thing.

It's like saying someone isn't "cut out for" dirty political campaigns. It means you're too decent to pull this crap.

Agree. The PP putting this lawyer down is a jerk, and I note nobody is commenting about how they love working with attorneys who are like Freedman. I think most of the pro-Baldoners left on this thread are not attorneys and don’t really know what they’re talking about tbh.

And you’d be wrong. I am, and I can tell there is at least one other pro Baldoni lawyer poster on just this page. However, I do appreciate that the two most prolific Lively posters have confirmed what we have long known, neither are litigators.

I litigate. So let me know what you think of those ROG responses. Totally normal, eh?

This is again missing the forest for the trees. Suppose they are inadequate? He’ll lose a motion to compel, write some bullshit vague but somewhat more detailed response and it won’t matter an iota for the outcome of this case. But if you want to waste your time on this, go ahead.

DP. I keep repeating this to the pro lively fake litigator/lawyer. All of these ‘losses’ for freedman (and she is bizarrely focused on him personally instead of his clients) are nothing burgers in the grand scheme of a long litigation like this. Yet she crows on

[Anonymous]

It's not clear to me whether Taylor Swift has been subpoena'd for a depo. This article on TMZ quotes her rep as calling it a document subpoena. It's possible she was asked for texts or documents she has relating to the film and Baldoni, and IIRC as a non-party, she has more protection under the PO to mark things AEO even if they are relevant to the case. So, significant because she's Taylor Swift, but relatively little may come of this.

https://www.tmz.com/2025/05/09/taylor-swift-subpoenaed-witness-blake-lively-justin-baldoni-case/



The rep adds ... "The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, 'My Tears Ricochet.' Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift's name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think almost any of Baldoni's claims in his complaint "pass the smell test."

- His defamation claims against the NYT are incredibly unlikely given that they were reporting on pending litigation and he is a public person.
- Likewise, his defamation claims against Lively, which depend on the NYT article, are likely to fail for the same reason.
- He has yet to even identify things Leslie Sloane did, at all, and in these recent interrogatories doubled down on that by saying he needs discovery to even identify a single defaming statement she made. I think this one is for sure gone.
- The extortion claims are really poorly pled, as they can't identify any benefit other than the p.g.a. credit that Lively received which has no monetary value and also cost Wayfarer nothing to give up.
- Likewise they have conspiracy claims but no evidence of conspiracy, unless that's popping up in discovery, this is just very weak.

The one Baldoni claim I could see surviving at this point is the defamation claim against Reynolds for the "sexual predator" statements. There at least they've identified a statement, and the person who said it, and there are witnesses. Maybe Lively gets included in that if the arguments they are making about Reynolds acting as her agent fly. I think the tortious interference claims attached to this will fail though because I don't think they can prove WME dropped Baldoni or Wayfarer due to Reynold's statements. They haven't produced a contract with WME either, and that's usually critical to a tortious interference claim. So I think it's just defamation here.

I think Lively's claims are going to go to trial. I don't think they'll get dismissed at SJ because there are enough issues of fact there, and I don't think they'll settle -- I think we are getting further and further from settlement daily (I would have put it at 50% likelihood a month or two ago and now I'd put it at like 10% barring some surprise that goes really poorly for either side).

I know people on this thread generally think either Baldoni is definitely guilty of the SH/retaliation or definitely innocent, but I think both of those positions are wrong. There's enough evidence there that a jury could find for Lively, but also it will come down to witness creditability and the stories each side tells (and also the stories the judge allows them to tell -- a lot of what is floated around now via PR will not be permitted as an argument in court and the jury will never here). I truly think it's a toss up and either side could prevail, and I also think that the side that wins in court will also ultimately win in the public eye.

I don't think Lively is lying about her claims as some argue. I think she's telling the truth and believes she was wronged. The bigger issue is if what she's alleging adds up to a guilty verdict for Baldoni. That's very much up in the air. Discovery is really critical here, though in a case like this it will really come down to witness testimony, including from the parties. It's a he said/she said, classically so.

DP
Please explain to me why Justin’s claims against Blake would fail for the same reasons as his claims against the NYT. You think Blake benefits from litigation privilege for a claim she filed? Interesting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think almost any of Baldoni's claims in his complaint "pass the smell test."

- His defamation claims against the NYT are incredibly unlikely given that they were reporting on pending litigation and he is a public person.
- Likewise, his defamation claims against Lively, which depend on the NYT article, are likely to fail for the same reason.
- He has yet to even identify things Leslie Sloane did, at all, and in these recent interrogatories doubled down on that by saying he needs discovery to even identify a single defaming statement she made. I think this one is for sure gone.
- The extortion claims are really poorly pled, as they can't identify any benefit other than the p.g.a. credit that Lively received which has no monetary value and also cost Wayfarer nothing to give up.
- Likewise they have conspiracy claims but no evidence of conspiracy, unless that's popping up in discovery, this is just very weak.

The one Baldoni claim I could see surviving at this point is the defamation claim against Reynolds for the "sexual predator" statements. There at least they've identified a statement, and the person who said it, and there are witnesses. Maybe Lively gets included in that if the arguments they are making about Reynolds acting as her agent fly. I think the tortious interference claims attached to this will fail though because I don't think they can prove WME dropped Baldoni or Wayfarer due to Reynold's statements. They haven't produced a contract with WME either, and that's usually critical to a tortious interference claim. So I think it's just defamation here.

I think Lively's claims are going to go to trial. I don't think they'll get dismissed at SJ because there are enough issues of fact there, and I don't think they'll settle -- I think we are getting further and further from settlement daily (I would have put it at 50% likelihood a month or two ago and now I'd put it at like 10% barring some surprise that goes really poorly for either side).

I know people on this thread generally think either Baldoni is definitely guilty of the SH/retaliation or definitely innocent, but I think both of those positions are wrong. There's enough evidence there that a jury could find for Lively, but also it will come down to witness creditability and the stories each side tells (and also the stories the judge allows them to tell -- a lot of what is floated around now via PR will not be permitted as an argument in court and the jury will never here). I truly think it's a toss up and either side could prevail, and I also think that the side that wins in court will also ultimately win in the public eye.

I don't think Lively is lying about her claims as some argue. I think she's telling the truth and believes she was wronged. The bigger issue is if what she's alleging adds up to a guilty verdict for Baldoni. That's very much up in the air. Discovery is really critical here, though in a case like this it will really come down to witness testimony, including from the parties. It's a he said/she said, classically so.

DP
Please explain to me why Justin’s claims against Blake would fail for the same reasons as his claims against the NYT. You think Blake benefits from litigation privilege for a claim she filed? Interesting

Why wouldn't she?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One other thing that KatOrtega has noted is that Bryan Freedman is going to be a very, very busy boy over the next several months. His LA firm only has 20 attorneys, plus the 40 at the NY firm. He sometimes works with Mark Geragos but that firm is busy with the Diddy trial. And yet over the next few months, Freedman needs to deal with Lively discovery, a CA Court of Appeals brief for Rachel Leviss, oral arguments for same, an FKA Twigs trial this fall, an ethics hearing for Tom Sandoval (where Freedman and someone else reportedly told Sandoval he was missing a deadline although Sandoval had asked for an extension due to the fact that his lawyer had been let go), and an arbitration for Faith Stower. This is besides potential depositions and/or hearing on the MTDs in the Lively case, as well as other discovery disputes that arise here.

Meanwhile, Lively does not have this problem, given the hundreds of attorneys at Quinn Emmanuel -- and they are not asking for extensions anymore, they are plowing through and (apparently) meeting deadlines, unlike Freedman.

So I'm curious to see how things go for Freedman over the next few months and I eagerly await karma to catch up with him, although I'm not holding my breath yet.

I frequent the IEWU sub and have to constantly see Kat Ortega's breathless ramblings about Freedman, and now you have to summarize what she says and drag it over here. No thanks.

Not only is Quinn Emanuel not representing Blake, they are representing one of the defendants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think almost any of Baldoni's claims in his complaint "pass the smell test."

- His defamation claims against the NYT are incredibly unlikely given that they were reporting on pending litigation and he is a public person.
- Likewise, his defamation claims against Lively, which depend on the NYT article, are likely to fail for the same reason.
- He has yet to even identify things Leslie Sloane did, at all, and in these recent interrogatories doubled down on that by saying he needs discovery to even identify a single defaming statement she made. I think this one is for sure gone.
- The extortion claims are really poorly pled, as they can't identify any benefit other than the p.g.a. credit that Lively received which has no monetary value and also cost Wayfarer nothing to give up.
- Likewise they have conspiracy claims but no evidence of conspiracy, unless that's popping up in discovery, this is just very weak.

The one Baldoni claim I could see surviving at this point is the defamation claim against Reynolds for the "sexual predator" statements. There at least they've identified a statement, and the person who said it, and there are witnesses. Maybe Lively gets included in that if the arguments they are making about Reynolds acting as her agent fly. I think the tortious interference claims attached to this will fail though because I don't think they can prove WME dropped Baldoni or Wayfarer due to Reynold's statements. They haven't produced a contract with WME either, and that's usually critical to a tortious interference claim. So I think it's just defamation here.

I think Lively's claims are going to go to trial. I don't think they'll get dismissed at SJ because there are enough issues of fact there, and I don't think they'll settle -- I think we are getting further and further from settlement daily (I would have put it at 50% likelihood a month or two ago and now I'd put it at like 10% barring some surprise that goes really poorly for either side).

I know people on this thread generally think either Baldoni is definitely guilty of the SH/retaliation or definitely innocent, but I think both of those positions are wrong. There's enough evidence there that a jury could find for Lively, but also it will come down to witness creditability and the stories each side tells (and also the stories the judge allows them to tell -- a lot of what is floated around now via PR will not be permitted as an argument in court and the jury will never here). I truly think it's a toss up and either side could prevail, and I also think that the side that wins in court will also ultimately win in the public eye.

I don't think Lively is lying about her claims as some argue. I think she's telling the truth and believes she was wronged. The bigger issue is if what she's alleging adds up to a guilty verdict for Baldoni. That's very much up in the air. Discovery is really critical here, though in a case like this it will really come down to witness testimony, including from the parties. It's a he said/she said, classically so.

This is clearly the best reasoned of all the discussions about viability of the parties claims, and it's not even close. I am probably the most pro-Lively of all the people on here, but I do totally agree with you that she may not win on her SH claims at trial, it will depend on the jury. I also agree with you (and with Baldoni's PR reps) that Lively believes Baldoni sexually harassed her and wasn't generally making claims up. I will be more clear -- *I* believe Baldoni did these things and in my own eyes that amounts to sexual harassment, as well as retaliation. But I agree that a fair jury could decide otherwise. I'm not entirely sure what the pro-Baldoners above are saying re Lively's SH and retaliation claims -- I think they are saying that they will survive summary judgement but that the SH claims can't possibly win at trial. If they are saying those claims can't survive SJ (not "enough evidence for [a reasonable] jury to find for Lively on SH" is the SJ standard after all), I definitely disagree with that. I also disagree with Baldoners that no jury could find Baldoni sexually harassed Lively (though agree it's possible that a reasonable jury could find he did not).

I think your analysis of the deficiencies in Baldoni's claims is spot on, and besides the NYT and Sloane, I also agree with you on Baldoni's extortion and conspiracy claims, which nobody else even mentioned.

The KatOrtega lawyer poster from reddit noted that Liman has previously, in complicated, multi-party and multi-claim cases like this, filled out a sort of spreadsheet listing every party and every claim and going through them with checks to see which claims filed against which parties were surviving the MTD and which were not. As that poster has posited, I think it's possible that Judge Liman will come up with something similar here, and that it may take him several months to do so, especially given the length and complexity of the current complaints, the COL issues, and the current absolute shambles state of Baldoni's complaint and/or Exhibit A (will Liman's clerk even consider that in evaluating evidence? It flouts the federal rules, so it seems to me s/he should not.).

Anyway, thanks for this post.

I really don’t know why the two of you feel the need to post some form of this every single day.

Dude. It’s not two separate people. They’re clearly either coordinated or the same person. She probably switches devices or it’s coordinated posters. Note whenever she gets called on it, she wants us to run to Jeff to check. She’s so obvious and loves to write long posts agreeing with herself/her twin poster.