Reply to Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]haha, Judge Liman denied Wallace's request for a protective order over the identity of his clients, saying that's what the protective order was for.  Which I said in here pages ago, but Baldoni supporters laughed at me.  lolol.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.390.0.pdf[/quote]

This seems weird. Can a nonbiased lawyer in here weigh in on whether this decision is unusual? I don't know why he should have to give up the names of his clients. [/quote]

I was the PP who said I'd be shocked if Liman ruled for Lively here, and I disagree with the ruling. I'll try to give an unbiased take.

Wallace argues that a wide range of people, from private citizens to celebrities, hire him for crisis management and confidentiality is a core part of that. It is true as the other PP said that "relevance" for purposes of discovery is broader than what would be admissible at trial. I really didn't see the relevance at that time, but it was a little clearer in Lively's reply letter: they want to use the client list to comb social media and identify user accounts that may have seeded stories related to those clients that are similar to the ones against Lively. I guess it does meet the criteria for relevance, barely. Lively argues that having shown relevance, Wallace does not meet the burden for good cause for the PO as (in her view) he merely states his work is confidential and covered by NDAs. And Lively correctly points out that NDA is not the same as having actual privilege (like attorney-client privilege or spousal privilege).

I'd go Wallace's way on this, because I'd argue that the probative value of the information to Lively is merely speculative (she *thinks* she *might* find some pattern which *might* lead to further discovery on those user accounts that *might* lead to information relevant to her case), while the damage to Wallace's business would be grave. Wallace's entire business model is that what he does is untraceable (and it might be because he's sketchy, but the court can't assume that), so this could literally ruin his entire business model and I think that threat is very real. Liman essentially is on the other end of the spectrum from me and apparently agrees with Lively, that the potential value of the information to her outweighs the speculation that this could harm Wallace.

What Lively's attorneys usually do in this situation and what I think Wallace should have done is request leave to reply one more time with the letter reply already included. They should have gone harder on how harmful this would be to Wallace and had more caselaw showing that the burden on Wallace outweighs the value of the information to Lively. It was dumb of his attorneys to say that Street has already testified it didn't do what is alleged, because, of course that's what they would say. I did not get the point of including that at all.

The quality of lawyering from Wallace's attorneys has been much better than the Freedman side so it's surprising. My best guess is they felt like I did, that they'd be shocked if Liman didn't rule in their favor and thought their initial argument was strong enough, as I did. They may be wishing they had written another reply.  Liman did say in the decision that Wallace didn't demonstrate an undue burden, so perhaps he would have been open hear more on that subject. I don't think Liman is a Lively shill or anything, he also did rule against Vanzan today and said they had to give their communications with Jones. [/quote]

Thanks for this analysis. Is Liman just granting whatever people want?[/quote]

Hugs to the PP who spent five paragraphs patiently explaining discovery standards and putting Liman’s ruling in context only to have this be their listener’s takeaway. [/quote]

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