Reply to Lively/Baldoni Lawsuit Part 2

Forum Index » Entertainment and Pop Culture

Reply to "Lively/Baldoni Lawsuit Part 2"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Now Burke is on Billy Bush, hah. [/quote]

Ok so Billy asked her why she celebrated when Justin’s case was dismissed. She said she hadn’t read the ruling, had only read the media story, and made the incorrect assumption that the judged ruled based on 47.1, including the question of malice. She said it wasn’t until she read the entire 100+ page ruling that she realized that wasn’t the case.

So just as we’ve suspected all along with Blake’s supporters, it was ignorance lol.[/quote]

This just makes her sound dumb though.

If she celebrated when Justin's case was dismissed under the assumption that 47.1 had been applied and contributed to its dismissal, then she clearly believed at the time that Blake was bringing her 47.1 motion appropriately and deserved to prevail. Now she claims that since the judge didn't use 47.1 in the dismissal, Blake can no longer use it, but she also says she hasn't changed her opinion on the original facts of the case. But on top of that she says the law isn't really for someone wealthy like Blake, but Blake was wealthy when Burke was supporting Blake's motion and celebrating the dismissal of Justin's case. It's not like Burke just found out for the first time that Blake Lively is a wealthy actress.

It just gets weirder with ever word out of her mouth.[/quote]

I think you’re twisting what she said. Did you watch the BB interview? She also said she tried to refrain from speaking on the facts of the case b/c you didn’t really know more than the rest of the public. She said her focus was only on defending the constitutionality of the law. She kept emphasizing Blake’s SH claims were dismissed and she settled the rest. She seems to strongly imply she questions the merit of Blake’s claims which goes to malice. [/quote]

I've seen clips and read some of her comments. I'm not going to watch a Billy Bush interview at work, people will think I'm insane.

Did she read the dismissal of Blake's SH claims? Judge Liman stated that as to three of her SH claims (I think Heath walking in on her, the comments on set about her being hot, and the issue of nudity in the birth scene), it was possible that but for the independent contractor issue, a jury could find that Blake reasonably believed she had been harassed. Sorry for the tortured description but I'm being careful so people don't yell at me. This was legally important because a major reason her retaliation claims were allowed to proceed is because the judge found that her original complaints about these three SH allegations could form the basis of a retaliation claim. The judge couldn't say they *do* form the basis of a retaliation claim -- it's an issue of fact for a jury. But by saying they could form the basis of a retaliation claim, he had to find there was no indication she brought those claims in bad faith.

I sincerely wish they had taken the retaliation claims to trial. I'll never quite get why they didn't. Maybe PR reasons, maybe some of their witnesses didn't want to testify because they were sick of it, maybe they just didn't feel they could persuade a jury. I don't know. But if you read that decision that dismissed the SH claims and retained her retaliation claims, there is no way to conclude that Blake's SH complaints were brought with malice and the decision clearly leans heavily in the other direction, or the judge wouldn't have dismissed the retaliation claims too.[/quote]

You have to remember the judge had to view the facts in the light most favorable to lively. The fact that he let the retaliation claims go forward doesn’t mean they had merit. But the fact she dropped them suggests they didn’t. The tmz guy has been making this claim for weeks, but how is it fair for Blake to collect damages when her case was thrown out and she dropped the rest. We the public have no basis for believing her claims were valid, so why would Baldoni? It’s not like she has a victory under her belt and is saying see, a jury agreed this happened to me, and their counter suit was nothing but intimidation. As it stands it looks like she falsely accused Justin and she’ll never be able to prove otherwise. She gave up that opportunity.[/quote]

Thanks, longtime litigator here, I never forget the judge is viewing it in the light most favorable to Lively, that's why I phrased it the way I did. The reason the judge does that is because the judge is NOT the finder of fact -- the jury is. His job in that decision was to decide if the claims could, as a matter of law, proceed to trial. The way judges do this is by essentially imagining that a jury has found that one side is correct on all the facts, and then determining whether this would make them prevail under the law. For her harassment claims, he found she would still lose under the law because the law requires she be an employee and he found that even under her facts, she was not.

And no, a settlement does not mean claims don't have merit. People settle merited claims all the time because litigation is expensive, time consuming, embarrassing, and emotionally draining. A settlement may never be legally used to infer that a claim lacked merit because often it doesn't mean that at all. Also in their announcement of the settlement, both sides agreed her complaints "deserved to be heard." You can't square that statement with a finding that she brought those complaints with malice, and Baldoni's lawyers signed their names to it.[/quote]

You’re misrepresenting the statement. It said concerns not complaint. It was carefully crafted and in no way conceded “without malice.” You should also know as an attorney that it won’t be admissible. Blake’s attorneys clearly asked for the statement so they could spin it but it won’t help them legally.

And on the merits of her retaliation claims, it looks bad that she dropped them but apparently still has the energy and money for a one sided evidentiary hearing on 47.1. It’s all legal strategy. The implication is they don’t think they can meet their legal burden on their case so they’re trying to do an end run around the trial to scrape out a victory. It’s PR theater. Everyone sees it including Burke.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics