Reply to Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Some more info on the motion for sanctions (I had time to skim it):

- You have to give 21 days notice for a Rule 11 sanctions motion, and they did. All the plaintiffs/attorneys were notified via letter on April 23rd of the potential Rule 11 violation. So Freedman et al have known about this for weeks.

- According to the motion, they didn't reply to these letters, called safe harbor letters. They also didn't take the opportunity to amend their complaint in response to the safe harbor letters. So they likely knew this motion was dropping today (exactly 21 days later).

- Hudson uses the motion to get a bunch of Freedman's statements to the press on the record, which is smart. Especially that Madison Square Garden comment, which the court probably won't like since it specifically references doing a deposition for a paying crowd (this is what the judge I clerked for would have called "unseemly").

- Hudson also repeatedly references Freedman's letter last week that was stricken and the fact that the judge's order noted that future violations would incur sanctions. That Freedman letter sure is looking like a gift to Lively's lawyers right now, unless Freedman is playing some 3-dimensional chess I don't understand. It primed Liman to be more amenable to this motion.

It's a solid motion with strong legal support. I don't know how Liman will view it. Prior to last week, I would say that he'd probably deem it premature, that he'd want to rule on the MTDs first. Now I'm not so sure -- the order to strike last week was very aggressively written, indicating real disgust with Freedman's tactics there. That, combined with the MSG statement and totally ignoring the deadline to request amendment even after Liman denied the request for extension is making me think this has a good shot.

Then the question will be what he awards. Just an FYI for the uninitiated, but rewards of attorneys fees are often extremely contested and can drag on for long after a court case concludes, because the lawyers will argue about whether the fees are appropriate. I work in an area where we wind up having to look at these conflicts extensively and they can be quite involved.[/quote]

I'm a Lively supporter who agrees with a lot of this except the part about the repeated references to the strikes last week.  If Lively cite to that that too much, they could make the judge regret striking the doc, lol.

I'll just reiterate what I said above -- I like this motion because it attempts to get Freedman to do what he has basically deferred doing despite multiple entreaties from the judge:  provide a factual basis for his weakest claims before the MTD is decided.  I don't know that Lively will actually win any sanctions here, but the motion and letters can provide an even stronger basis for the judge to dismiss these claims with prejudice when he decides the MTD.  In that way, at minimum, the motion gets these issues before the judge in a strategic way and shows Liman that Freedman had plenty of opportunities to fix this problem and yet declined to do so.

It's hard to say how Liman will respond to this.  He's extremely no nonsense and might reject it outright as premature.  I think he will hold it until he considers the MTDs, and will probably decline to award sanctions, but that he may cite to this motion in dismissing claims with prejudice.  [/quote]

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