Reply to Lively/Baldoni Lawsuit Part 2

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For the non lawyers: is the lawsuit basically over and Blake lost?[/quote]

In late March, 10 of Blakes’s 13 claims were thrown out by a federal judge, including all of the sexual harassment claims and anything related to individual defendants like Justin Baldoni.

Three claims remained, all related to retaliation and contract issues. That obviously significantly narrowed and weakened her case.

We then found out a couple of weeks ago that they settled the remaining 3 claims. We’ve now found out since then there was no money exchanged in the settlement so the $300 million she was seeking in damages she did not get. There also apparently does not seem to be an NDA, which leads many to believe Blake’s team did not have a lot of leverage in deciding the settlement since they came away with so little.

So the big case that we’ve been talking about for the last 18 months is over. It’s weird to frame this as winners and losers. I would say Blake did not succeed in what she set out to do. Some will phrase it more harshly. But the fact remains, she likely spent something like $30 million in legal fees and walked away with no money and the party that she sued is free to tell their story.

[b]There are still a few other more minor matters for the court to take care of, one is that last year Justin‘s team sued Blake for something like $400 million in a defamation lawsuit. She is now seeking to get legal fees from that suit. It seems like a longshot, but even if she does, those fees would be small considering that suit got kicked out right away and there wasn’t a lot of time spent litigating that compared to the case we have been watching for the last 18 months. [/b]

There are also an ongoing suit against Jonesworks, the original PR firm WF hired, and some of the publicists who have since left that firm. Finally, Jed Wallace is suing Blake lively I believe for defamation and that is still ongoing.

Those are much more minor though I am sure they will get a lot of attention from the diehard folks that have been following, but the general public probably will not be as invested in those cases. [/quote]

This is not accurate. Blake is not simply seeking attorneys fees in that case. She made the motion under a relatively new California law, 47.1, also known as the MeToo law. It may indeed come to nothing, I don't know, but the law itself allows for a lot more than attorneys fees (it allows for additional punitive damages). It's worth paying attention to this part of the case if only to see how that law is applied to these facts. This motion has attracted the interest of a bunch of very prominent advocacy organizations who filed amici (friend of the court) briefs in support of it last year.

The law seeks to punish people who attempt to sue survivors into silence, by forcing them to pay damages for filing unfounded defamation claims against survivors. The law is written to allow considerable damages, far beyond attorneys fees, but has never been applied before.[/quote]

Thanks, that’s helpful. I guess I don’t understand if all of her sexual harassment claims were tossed out she would be getting fees from him? This could have major implications and set women and accusers way back.

So I can accuse someone of sexual harassment, they can stand up for themselves and counter because everyone has a right to use the court. My claims are tossed. And then I could sue them for fees? Make that make sense.

I understand it’s a new law that has not been tested, but I don’t think this was the intent of the law at all.[/quote]

It's more nuanced than that. Blake's sexual harassment claims were not dismissed because she lied or even because the judge determined that the behavior is definitively not harassment. In fact the vast majority of what she alleges is fully agreed upon by both parties, from early in the litigation. The question was always whether those allegations constituted a hostile work environment. This is the standard course of a hostile work environment case and if you are familiar with them, they often turn on things like how comments and behaviors are interpreted. Some of Blake's allegations would never have been considered SH even had she been deemed an employee (Baldoni talking about her dead father, the interactions that occurred before filming started, for instance), but others the court agreed would normally be considered genuine issues of fact for the jury, such as whether Baldoni's use of the word "hot" to describe Blake and others, Heath entering her trailer while she was naked without her permission, and the situation surrounding the filming of the birth scene.

The judge found that but for the independent contractor issue, these incidents could be found by a jury to constitute SH, which means Blake brought her lawsuit in good faith. Something Baldoni himself has acknowledge both in evidence that came out during discovery (stating "she really believes" she was wronged in text messages) and in the statement that accompanied their settlement, which acknowledged that Blake's claims had a right to be heard. That's not a statement acknowledging she was harassed, clearly, but it does acknowledge the validity of her claims and her lawsuit. It wasn't frivolous or harassing.

However, the countersuit brought by Baldoni & Co. does not appear to have been brought in good faith. That lawsuit was tossed for failing to state even one valid claim against any of its defendants. The countersuit was accompanied by an "Exhibit A" which was used to portray Lively as a liar but which the judge said himself in the first hearing to the case was not appropriate. But this Exhibit and the countersuit were posted on a website and members of the press and content creators were steered towards it, to use it in negative coverage of Blake. The discovery in the case even showed Baldoni's team, including Steve Sarowitz, discussing how a content creator, Sloane Stephens, would discuss aspects of the countersuit in her coverage in order to make it look "organic" and not dictated by Baldoni's team.

The intent of 47.1 is to prevent good faith claims of SH and SA from being silenced by defendants willing to due and smear plaintiffs until it is simply not worth it to proceed with valid allegations, because we have a public interest in having good faith plaintiffs allowed to prosecute valid claims. I'll leave it to the judge to determine if the facts of this case fit the intent and requirements of 47.1, but to quote the jointly agreed upon settlement statement, everyone here agrees Blake's concerns deserved to be heard. But if that's true, then why did Baldoni sue her for defamation to the tune of 400m when she sought to air those claims?[/quote]

The big difference here is that if Blake had kept this as a legal matter what you laid out might make sense but Justin didn’t sue her for defamation because she bought her claims to court. We aren’t stupid. There was a matter of a very public New York Times article written by the me too journalist which was very one-sided? Maybe you didn’t see that. Oh, and New York Times lifted the paywall to get maximum exposure - further they worked on it for months and they gave Justin about 12 hours or so to respond.

Blake and Ryan aren’t interested in letting the courts decide anything, giving someone a fair trial, standing up for the rights of women…..they wanted the New York Times article to unfairly destroy a man and his livelihood because Blake has had a series of failed businesses and bad publicity her whole career. They were absolutely shocked and unprepared for this to go any further. That’s why as soon as Justin had a lawyer go to the press and put up a website they tried to put a gag order. Then it was explained to these two morons that that’s not how court works. It’s not a people magazine editor that they can pay to place nice stories….both sides actually get to have a say. OOPS.

They are used to controlling publicity. They were in over their skis when they got to federal court. [/quote]

I would really really like to have seen the defamation case against the NYT appealed. Did justin et al waive their right to appeal in the settlement?[/quote]

Yes, that's how most people are reading it - the settlement says WP waived all their rights to appeal in the case, not just the claims against Lively. NYT has already filed in the NY state court to take judicial notice of the settlement, so we'll soon find out if the state court agrees with that interpretation, and makes its decision on their anti-SLAPP motion. WP had previously argued that the federal case wasn't final yet, because they could still appeal. [/quote]

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