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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I really don't get the personal animus shown here towards Freedman.  Gottlieb has been far more nasty in his pleadings, and refusing to agree to a first request for an extension is not normal practice.  Being a bit of a blowhard is pretty much a character trait for plaintiff attorneys and will be something the judge sees day in and day out.  It certainly isn't something that will "turn him against" Freedman as one poster hopes.[/quote]

I wouldn't say I have "personal" animus towards Freedman, but as a lawyer I've known many like him and it's one of the reasons I left litigation. It is not a style or personality type I enjoy, so I'm predisposed to dislike him. Also early in following this case, I read this profile of him (from last summer), and there's a lot of details in there that give me the ick:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/entertainment-lawyer-bryan-freedman-hollywood-dark-knight-1235919993/

I do think he's an effective lawyer for the kind of cases he takes on and I don't think he's dumb. But I cannot stand his approach to the media and I find his personality grating.

I also happened to have a lot of respect for Gottlieb based on some of his prior pro bono work (for instance defending GA poll workers against attacks from Giuliani after the 2020 election) and his style is preferable to me -- more restrained and professional IMO.

I just don't enjoy bombastic lawyers unless they are funny. Freedman is a specific kind of litigator, a media-savvy pitbull. I've known others like him. It is effective but I don't enjoy it. That's all.[/quote]

DP, who listened to the PO hearing, who doesn’t like Freedman and makes somewhat hostile posts about him here.  I have worked with (and against) other attorneys who are openly hostile to opposing counsel from the starting point (rather than having such a take on opposing counsel be earned over time due to dirty tricks or whatever), and it’s never good. These have always been the worst attorneys to deal with in my career and have been uniformly terrible people. Their egos cannot be appeased and even when they are on your side, they are impossible to work with.

The other thing I’ve heard about Freedman specifically is that he files things prematurely before he has the facts to back them up, expecting to gain those facts through discovery. That’s not the way complaints are supposed to work — you’re supposed to have the basics to support your claim in hand before filing. You shouldn’t be signing court filings that are guesses. But he doesn’t see a problem with that. [/quote]

PP here and one of my issues with Freedman is that he has a history of doing things that I think are unethical with respect to the media. For instance in that article I linked to, they mention a case he handled against Bravo where he went on TMZ and waived around a document with the title "Slave Contract," implying that this was one of the contracts with Bravo at issue in his case. Later it turned out that was a prop contract that had nothing to do with the case. When I practiced, I encountered lawyers like this who have very loose relationships with truth and ethics and it's just so far from who I am as a person and a lawyer, it really drove me crazy. There is a whole school of thought in litigation that it's okay to pushed the boundaries of professional or personal ethics in order to zealously advocate for your client, he's far from alone in this. I dislike it and it wore me down over time and eventually I just decided I didn't want to spend so much of my professional life engaged in conflict with people who had such a different approach to me.

Lawyers disagree on this. I have old colleagues I like and respect who are not bothered by this stuff. Everyone is different. But for me, Freedman crosses a line. I feel similarly about his "Exhibit A" (which is just clearly a violation of procedural rules and is almost certainly going to be stricken at some point) and about some of the "leaks" or "receipts" Freedman has produced that I think are intentionally misleading.[/quote]

You don’t seem cut out for litigation and that is reflected in your analysis.[/quote]

Not being "cut out for" the kind of litigation where people lie about "slave contracts" to the press in order to undercut the opposition is a good thing.[/quote]

It's like saying someone isn't "cut out for" dirty political campaigns. It means you're too decent to pull this crap.[/quote]

Agree. The PP putting this lawyer down is a jerk, and I note nobody is commenting about how they love working with attorneys who are like Freedman. I think most of the pro-Baldoners left on this thread are not attorneys and don’t really know what they’re talking about tbh. [/quote]

And you’d be wrong.  I am, and I can tell there is at least one other pro Baldoni lawyer poster on just this page.  However, I do appreciate that the two most prolific Lively posters have confirmed what we have long known, neither are litigators.[/quote]

I litigate.  So let me know what you think of those ROG responses. Totally normal, eh?[/quote]

This is again missing the forest for the trees.  Suppose they are inadequate?  He’ll lose a motion to compel, write some bullshit vague but somewhat more detailed response and it won’t matter an iota for the outcome of this case.  But if you want to waste your time on this, go ahead.[/quote]

All of this matters in terms of building credibility with the judge. Judge Lyman denied their request for an extension, and these ROG responses are what they filed, late.

It all matters.  And what facts Freedman has and shares (or can’t share) now may matter especially in deciding whether to grant that MTD with or without prejudice.

It all matters. Always. [/quote]

Not sure what you are talking about, judge cannot go beyond the complaint in deciding a motion to dismiss.[/quote]

You’re not allowed to sue people based on vibes, and then file ROG responses like these when the people you sue ask wtf you are suing them for. [/quote]

It’s incredibly common to get the premature objection to interrogatories.  Talk about making a mountain of a molehill.  It’s like you have never actually litigated a case.  [/quote]

DP here, but it *is* uncommon to use the premature objection to an interrogatory that is just "please identify the defamatory statements you are accusing the defendant of making." They are arguing that it's too early to identify even one example of alleged behavior justifying their entire action against Sloane. That is definitely unusual.

Of course, it's also unusual for a complaint to have such egregious group pleading issues that it would be necessary for a defendant to ask the plaintiff "uh, what specifically are you suing me for" in an interrogatory. So I guess that's why I've never seen it before. Usually the response to a question like this would just be to refer to the portion of the complaint that outlines the defendant's alleged behavior.

And at risk of invoking some kind of seizure in the pro-Baldoni folks, I'll point out that one way to avoid this predicament, where you are suing someone for something but you can't specify what and you have to keep asking for more discovery in the hopes that it will produce for you a specific cause of action, is to file a Doe lawsuit in which to subpoena evidence you believe may give rise to a cause of action, and then use that evidence to file a complaint wherein you may properly plead specific causes of action against specific defendants. [ducks][/quote]

I, for one, appreciated both the substance and the humor of this post!  [/quote]

Other than it is completely wrong, sure.  The system is actually intended for parties to name defendants as soon as they are known so those parties can, you know, participate in the process and defend themselves.

Which is why the so-called Wayfarer doe case was not a doe case by the time it was filed in NY ( and was never a true doe case because it always had a named defendant).  And why the VanZan sham case is so problematic.[/quote]

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