Reply to Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The more I think about it, the more I'm getting worried for JB over the retaliation claim, and like people here have been saying forever, I get that's why BL's lawyers want to focus on it. I genuinely think most of the negative press toward Blake was organic, and I'm not pro-BL, but I think it's worrisome if they can find even a handful of posts disparaging her that they can trace back to JB.

I don't think he hired Nathan because she spoke up against sexual harassment, I think he hired Nathan because Blake was running to the press first (see that Daily Mail article in early August about him being a chaunivist) and he needed to protect himself and the company. But I just don't see a jury making a distinction between "retaliating" against SH and "retaliating" to protect himself. Her lawyers are going to get them to ask: Did JB launch any counterattack on her for whatever reason? I don't think the jury is going to believe her on the SH claims, but I think BL's lawyers are going to try their hardest to make the argument that retaliation is their focus, SH is subjective and so don't focus on that, etc. [/quote]

I think Baldoni is going to have a hard time explaining why he was paying Wallace $90K to just keep track of socials and not affirmatively add commentary to the conversations when keeping track of socials is specifically work that his other 2 PR firms were getting paid $30K/month and $15K/month to do as per their written contracts.  [/quote]

Unless Wallace was promoting positive commentary about Justin.  There is actually a fair amount he could be doing that wouldn’t involve Lively at all.  Same for all the pr folks, positive stories about their clients is their business.[/quote]

Agree that if Wayfarer/TAG/Wallace can show that they were just promoting positive stories about Justin and Wayfarer and staying neutral on Blake, they will beat the retaliation claims.

There are a few messages from the Jen Abel phone that indicate they did go after Blake though, including with Wallace's team, and that some of what they did was seeding negative stories online. There could be some explanations for those messages that are exculpating -- maybe they wanted to go after Blake but didn't because cooler head prevailed, or because they discovered they didn't need to. It's also possible that TAG or Wallace essentially lied to Wayfarer about what they were doing, that they said said they would see negative stories about Blake and then those popped up on their own without any effort, so TAG and Wallace claimed to have caused it (in order to justify their large fees).

One legal question I have is what if the facts show that Baldoni and Wayfarer absolutely wanted to go after Blake and hired TAG and Wallace specifically to spread negative content about her online, but then they didn't? Would Baldoni/Wayfarer still potentially be liable for trying to retaliate? Would just hiring these people and giving them the directive to trash Blake in the press be enough for a jury to find them guilty of retaliation? I truly have no idea.[/quote]

The cause of action requires actual acts of retaliation.  I thought about it, but didn’t actually do it isn’t enough.[/quote]

Right but hiring TAG and Wallace and directing them to smear Lively is an "actual act of retaliation." It's not just thinking about it. I am not sure how the law handles a situation where the defendant clearly had every intent of retaliating and (1) hires people to do it, (2) tells them explicitly to commit acts of retaliation, (3) is told by these people that these retaliatory acts are happening and have been successful, and then (4) pays these people for the retaliation. But turns out the people lied and never actually did anything, just took credit for organic bad press that was happening online.

Please note I'm talking totally hypothetically here -- I'm not saying this has been proven, I'm just trying to understand what the outcome would be if what I just described was proven.[/quote]

I don’t think she has three and four.[/quote]

There are multiple texts where Abel and Nathan either report directly to Baldoni/Heath or talk about reporting to them about the success of the activities, including praising the work of "Jed and his team." That would seem to fulfill #3, especially if discovery reveals additional communications where Nathan and Wallace talk about the "success" of their activities.

For #4, presumably these people got paid. There will either be payments or not. Certainly they were contracted for work they expected to be paid for. If they weren't paid, yes, the whole thing falls apart.

But what if they said they'd succeeded, and they were paid, and then at trial Nathan and Wallace testify that they didn't actually do the retaliatory acts they were hired to do? What happens then?[/quote]

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