8. Lively v. Baldoni: Controversy, Concessions & Celebrity Communications (Taylor’s Version)

In the series finale of the Lively v. Baldoni saga, Reputation Nation hosts , Anne Marie Malecha and Stacy Bratcher dissect the headlines, crisis moments, and reputational fallout from one of Hollywood’s most watched legal battles. From Blake Lively’s lengthy post-trial statement and Taylor Swift’s rumored deposition to the strategic choices facing Justin Baldoni, this episode reveals what goes into communications and legal decision-making when stakes are the highest and everyone is watching. Packed with actionable takeaways for leaders and communicators, don’t miss these expert insights on managing your message and reputation under pressure.

Lively v. Baldoni: Controversy, Concessions & Celebrity Communications (Taylor’s Version) Transcript

Anne Marie (00:02)

Welcome to Reputation Nation, the podcast that goes beyond the headlines to unpack corporate crises, legal battles, and the strategies that shape reputations. I’m Anne Marie Malecha the CEO of Dezenhall Resources and crisis management expert.

Stacy (00:16)

And I’m Stacy Bratcher, a lawyer who’s battled crises on the front page and in the courtroom. And sometimes those crises have led me into the foxhole with Anne Marie. Whether you’re in the C-suite, the legal department, or are just curious about controversy, we’ve got you covered. Let’s get started.

Anne Marie (00:34)

In today’s episode of Reputation Nation, Stacy and I will be analyzing the legal maneuvers, public power plays, and media revelations that have reshaped the Lively v. Baldoni battle. We’ll look at the judge’s most recent ruling, Blake Lively’s new filings, and the drama surrounding the alleged Taylor Swift deposition.

I’d like to apologize for any mispronunciations of names. I have a solid Midwestern accent, which allows me to make my vowels as long, loud and throaty as possible and I understand that Justin Baldoni’s name is Justin Baldoni not Baldani. Sorry team Justin.

Special thanks to Stacy’s daughter who gave us the idea for the episode title Taylor’s Version. There’s been a lot of interesting developments in the Justin Baldoni Blake Lively case. Some have been in the courtroom, some have been in the news, some have been both. I think that

The courtroom has been particularly interesting to me and I’m very curious Stacy to get your take on what you think some of these decisive factors that Judge Lindman’s June decision to dismiss Justin Baldoni’s $400 million counterclaim. How did that come about? Was it not a great case to be before the judge? Usually when a case gets dismissed, the ruling that comes with it is fairly telling.

Stacy (01:49)

I’ll just start by saying that, you know, motions to dismiss are not readily granted. mean, federal court is its own animal. The federal rules of civil procedure govern and they really try to preserve parties rights to litigate. the rule at play is rule 12 B6, which there’s books written about, but essentially the party has to state a claim for which relief can be granted. And that’s the fundamental problem.

with the Baldoni claims. he sued for breach of contract, a really weird tort called civil extortion, which is not used very often, defamation and false light and breach of contract, tortious interference with contract. And I would say backing up, know, I think Baldoni’s team did a great job on the PR, but where the rubber meets the road, there was sizzle and no steak. So their claims were just not, not held up.

I mean, it was, I would say a case of sloppy drafting where they did not link facts to the claims they were making. And they, they kind of missed the big tide that has shifted after the Me Too movement, which is that victims or purported victims of sexual misconduct have a lot of

protections and there are lots of processes that are designed to afford them the right to be heard. And so sort of the fundamental body blow to the Baldoni case was that Blake Lively’s claims her complaint and her communications with the press were all protected because she was complaining of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. And in California, there’s specific laws on that. So

you know, that was really, like I said, the body blow to the whole thing. And I think that his lawyers kind of missed the mark in realizing that the world is different post Me Too.

Anne Marie (03:48)

one

those things that lawyers and comms people have to get on the same page about from the outset. And you and I have talked about this a hundred times behind the scenes and now probably at least a few times within the course of Reputation Nation, too. But if you do not have an aligned objective and then a strategy that fits both the legal side of the house and the communication side of the house and they’re working together, you’re ultimately probably not going to prevail. Now, I would perhaps argue that Baldoni’s team has done much

better in the press than Lively’s has done on the whole, despite Lively having the initial real, I think, know, haymaker, if you will, if we’re going to keep using boxing analogies, with the New York Times piece at the outset of this. But the longevity of the case is different than the initial gotten a little bit boring, dare I say, with the exception of some potential celebrity involvement.

Stacy (04:44)

Yeah, I mean, I think where we’re getting into and I wonder if the public has sort of legal fatigue because all of this is motions and opinions and you know, it just is much more in the legal minutia about how parties resolve disputes in court. It’s not sexy. It’s not page six and TMZ and timelines that are on the internet. So I agree, you know, the starting

point has to be aligned. will say, I love your feedback here. mean, he was backed into a corner. She’s got receipts. had those text messages, I think are quite persuasive. I thought Friedman did an excellent job with the website and the timeline and then the counter punch, even if he was not successful ultimately with the…

a counter suit, it did give a new platform for him to spin a narrative. I’m sure that’s a tactic that you’ve seen in your travel.

Anne Marie (05:41)

I agree. think if I was looking at my own beliefs about Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively at the beginning of this to where they’re at now, when I read the New York Times piece I thought, well this guy is in trouble. And then when we saw

Text messages that were, you the context around the original receipts that we saw. And then we saw some of the additional things that his team put out the, their litigation website and a few other pieces of collateral along the way. ultimately thought.

guy might not be my favorite person, but I don’t think he did all of the things that were alleged in the initial complaint. if you’re trying to maintain a reputation and be able to continue to do business, that may be the best outcome you can hope for. And I think that’s a practical thing for folks to consider in crisis. Winning a lawsuit might not be the ultimate win in what you’re seeking. It would be nice at $400 million judgment. Sure. Who doesn’t want that? But if you still can maintain some credibility and you’ve

clawed back perhaps this perception that you’re the bad guy.

Stacy (06:47)

or a sexual predator.

Anne Marie (06:49)

Yeah, exactly. You move out of the villain construct and the villain victim vindicator, that’s a good thing. So I do think that his lawyers from the risk management side of things on the PR front did a great job. And his legal spokesperson was his lawyer and I can’t speak to his credibility in the courtroom, but if you’ve got somebody that can credibly defend you in the court of public opinion, there is value in that. So to say that it’s a loss through and through, I don’t think that’s the case.

Stacy (07:18)

Yeah.

Anne Marie (07:19)

where I’m at now is the, are at the fatigue point and the legal maneuvering, as you and I know, we can do our best to make it interesting to people in the world. But man, trying to take a judge’s decision that cites case law through and through and, you know, really sounds like legalese and make it a win or a loss. Sure, you might get a few stories out of it, a little bit of a rise, but it really doesn’t advance the narrative in a meaningful way unless

the judge gives you some enormous nugget of wisdom in their decision that you can use. And they are gonna be in this procedural phase for a while, where discovery happens, depositions happen. And ⁓ generally that’s fairly boring, depending on who’s on your potential deposition list.

Stacy (08:05)

Well, I know you sort of teased, you know, statements and how to make legal filings interesting or newsworthy. And I know I’m going to tease right now, we’re going to do a little bit of live editing of some of the statements that were issued, but you’re not wrong. And that is certainly how you and I have worked together and how in-house lawyers, law firm lawyers work with comms all the time is

how to tell the story because the filings, the way that you portray something to a judge is very different than the way that you try to persuade the public. I wholeheartedly agree. mean, Baldoni, first of all, no one had any idea who this dude was before this case. when they first heard about it, they thought he was a dirt bag. And now, you know, I was just talking with some friends over the weekend about it and they’re still team.

Justin so, you know despite the wins that the court has delivered There is a perception that he’s the underdog and was was bullied by Blake and Ryan Reynolds

Anne Marie (09:04)

I’m glad you brought that up because reputation baseline is something that we think a lot about because generally the starting point for the characters in our crises are never the same. So are you a big corporation that people love the product that you make because it’s you know in their house they see it every day their kids love it or are you some you know widget that goes into that product that nobody knows about or do you you know do you make missiles or do you make tide? Like there are so many things that impact that

at on the corporate level and in the personality game in terms of celebrities, they’re all brands and people you know have this belief whether it’s justified or not about who Blake Lively is, who Ryan Reynolds is, what their sort of combination as a couple, their impact on Hollywood, the things that they’ve done and then there’s this guy that nobody really knew the name of until

this film came about. So you’ve got two very different reputation baselines and if you’re thinking about it like the scales of justice, there’s a direct inverse relationship where one goes up, one goes down and we saw that like directly at play. Where Lively I think started further from the top, it’s now evened out or maybe flipped in Baldoni’s favor.

Stacy (10:20)

That was the sense I got from the conversation I had this weekend. And again, as a lawyer, I look at facts. so to see that the judge in the motion to dismiss, which again is to me is a high bar to get those to me. That was a sign that the Baldoni narrative was just that just a narrative, but folks are really dug in because of the effective job that his team has done in painting a different picture. So.

You can win one place and not another. The other thing I wanted to mention, know, winning a lawsuit is a marathon, you know, and especially compared to today’s quick, you know, immediate tick tocky type of media consumption. You know, this case, you know, by all accounts is moving on quite a quick, a fast clip, but we’re, not even a year in and there’s still a ton to do. Whereas people have already moved on.

Anne Marie (11:16)

I think that’s the challenge when it comes to celebrity cases versus corporate cases. think most

corporate entities or large organizations that enter into a lawsuit do it knowing that they’re in it for the long haul and they ultimately want the legal outcome. That being said, they’re happy to take some wins in the court of public opinion along the way, but they know that it will be episodic. I think for celebrities, that’s different because they’re used to this sort of constant drum beat around the good that they’re doing, the thing that they’re putting out in the world. They want that attention. And this gets back to the age-old question of is all press.

good press and when it comes to the corporate side of things I would generally say no. In the celebrity realm if your business is having your name in the news and people are thinking about you in your top of mind maybe so.

which I’m guessing they’re probably having fatigue with their own case too, thinking that it would be wrapped up quickly or it would force somebody into some sort of settlement and then they could win and move on. This makes me think about was this a publicity stunt? We had a conversation at some juncture about the sort Machiavellian nature of did they hatch this plan to try and get more folks to see their movies? And I do think there’s reason enough to think that that’s possibility.

given the players involved and what we’re seeing here.

Stacy (12:37)

Well, I want to talk, you know, again, we kind of tease the statement, you know, but the dismissal of Baldoni’s case is a significant development. And I’m curious about your take on how you think Lively’s team should have or should be using that, that event to refresh her brand. Because I think as we’ve both just agreed, she sort of got bruised through this whole ordeal.

Anne Marie (13:03)

very tricky place to be for her. And I think there’s a lot of ways you can go and most of them are likely going to be criticized as too little, too late, not enough. And I sort of hate that those tropes are likely to be what we’ve seen. I will say that Lively has been doing some brand building in some of her companies that don’t have names attached to her. I think that was probably smart to have those things moving. I think what is telling to me is

much she really digs in on the victim narrative versus the I’m moving on narrative. And if it were me, I would be attempting to look forward wholly and not really repeating the negative, if you will. And I hate to say being a victim as being a negative, but there’s questions of whether or not her victimhood is warranted to the extent of which from her initial claim to where it became the counterclaim. for her, it’s a

It’s a get back to business moment in my mind. And I think the more she can put distance and space between the entire movie, the entire Baldoni situation and yeah. Exactly. And getting people’s lives again in the way they were used to seeing her. think that’s important. I do think from a framing perspective, the it girl moment.

Stacy (14:12)

Turn the page already.

Anne Marie (14:24)

is probably not the right one to jump back into. It needs to be more of the behind the scenes, I’m a workhorse, I’m not a show pony, because I think in Hollywood we’ve seen that be a narrative that is tough to recover from. As a woman in business, I hate that that’s something that is an unfortunate default negative against her in this case. You is she a difficult personality to work with? That sort of thing. She’s gonna have to overcome that.

Stacy (14:50)

Yeah. Well, and again, we’re sort of teasing kind of her framing around it. And I want to can’t wait to get to looking at her statement. But one thing, you know, the I wanted a development I think we should talk about is her motion for attorney’s fees and damages following the motion to dismiss win, which this is a new thing. This is a new California has a new relatively new statute that protects victims or purported victims of sexual misconduct.

to file lawsuits and it’s kind of a kind of a counterpunch to those defamation suits exactly like the Baldoni case. I think in one of the statements, her lawyers called it sort of an own goal that Baldoni’s team just like walked right into this punch. Not, I don’t know if they didn’t do the research or thought they were going to just, you know, kick the can and maybe not be held accountable for her trying to turn the page or whatever we think she should be doing.

Attorneys fees and damages for her win is maybe not the best way to do that.

Anne Marie (15:53)

No, I have one question that comes to mind with this particular statute and it’s not something that folks can do everywhere it is. I think California specific. Does that run on its own track as a sort of separate?

piece to the other cases or does that happen as like an addendum to the current cases? I ask that because how much of the things that have been put out in court already could be relitigated in this from a narrative perspective while they’re seeking attorney’s fees? That would be the only pro I see of that road, but I don’t know if that’s a possibility.

Stacy (16:24)

Well,

so the motion and it’s the weaponized defamation lawsuits act of 2023 in California, that motion is available. That cause of action is available because of the motion to dismiss win. So it’s a motion within the larger case to the extent. mean, she’s got to have evidence to support that claim. But again, the judge’s order is

pretty much exhibit a that she, you know, was victimized by this. This is a retaliatory lawsuit. So it’s going to be quite interesting, but in terms of the comms side of it and what it does for her reputation, from my perspective, I think it puts her in a sticky position because she did win. She was vindicated, but it sort of makes her look greedy or punitive. But at the same time, he was trying to shut her down with, with the defamation lawsuit. So it’s.

exactly textbook the conduct that that 2023 law was passed to address.

Anne Marie (17:26)

it would be interesting particularly given her statement that

You know, she’s lucky that she has the resources to fight back. Now, if I was seeking attorney’s fees and I was going to potentially donate them all to some sort of nonprofit that helps others fight that, I could maybe see that, but that wasn’t a part of the conversation and doing it. And listen, if you’re looking for a narrative win, you are going to make hay out of that at the beginning. And that didn’t happen. I mean, maybe that’s still to come. Listen, it is expensive. Whether you have Ryan Reynolds movie money or Rob McElhenney movie money,

a joke that the two of them make in their show about the soccer team in Wrexham is, you know, they’re on two different stratospheres. You still don’t want to pay for frivolous lawsuits. I get that, but the optics of it are not great. Lively’s team put out two statements. The first was from her and it said, like so many others, I felt the pain of a retaliatory lawsuit, including the manufactured shame that tries to break us.

While the suit against me was defeated, so many don’t have the resources to fight back. I am more resolved than ever to continue to stand for every woman’s right to have a voice in protecting themselves, including their safety, their integrity, their dignity, and their story. With love and gratitude for the many who stood by me, many of you I know, many of you I don’t know, but I will never stop appreciating or advocating for you.

Stacy (18:54)

I have to say at the, at the jump, I don’t know how many others there are that have felt the pain of a retaliatory lawsuit. I don’t, I mean, I know that this is a tactic, but if I was reading this as sort of a member of the public, I don’t know that I would be like, yeah. When I had that retaliatory lawsuit filed against me. So I don’t know who the message is to. So I’m curious about whether you feel as you know,

If you were in the room with her comms and legal team, what do think the conversation was around this?

Anne Marie (19:28)

not

particularly relatable in my mind. The subset of people that have experienced retaliatory lawsuits, probably slim. I do think retaliation is something that people understand more broadly. And I probably would have framed that a little bit differently. The thing I have a hard time with this statement is who’s the audience? I probably would have attempted to tighten this up a little bit more and make it more to the point about the situation at hand and your experience in that. I do understand why

She included some of the things towards the end about not wanting to stop advocating for these things. And maybe that was a tell that maybe that’s the tell I was looking for on what they’re doing on the attempt to get lawyers fees back. To me, this was kind of a wishy washy statement. That’s a lot of words that didn’t say a whole lot.

Stacy (20:16)

Yeah, I felt that too. Maybe she’s trying to position herself as sort of a victim’s advocate or, you know, champion of women who’ve experienced sexual misconduct. I mean, on the legal fees side, you know, not to be cynical, but this law and these provisions are designed to encourage people to file lawsuits. And plaintiffs’ lawyers love attorney’s fees provisions. and this statute actually…

provides for both punitive and trouble damages. Trouble damages means three times your damages. So this is not an uphill battle to get a lawyer to sign on to take your case. So that felt a little hollow as a more technical reader ⁓ of this. anyway, felt it was, if you’ve got to say something, this was probably, I agree with you too much and not a focused message.

Anne Marie (21:09)

flip side I think what her attorneys put out was pretty good.

Stacy (21:12)

Well, it’s I’d say just the facts now, so I’ll take that one today’s ruling represents a complete victory and total vindication as we have maintained from the beginning this quote $400 million lawsuit was baseless and the court recognized it for what it was We are eager to proceed to the next phase which includes pursuing attorneys fees trouble damages and punitive damages So basically I like that too. She’s they’re saying like we’re not letting up like, you know

It’s on basically.

Anne Marie (21:43)

Yeah, I mean, they’re saying that we’re not done with this fight, which I get. mean, listen, a legal statement versus the statement coming from the person at the center of the case, those are going to be two different things. I would bet that there were probably some flags raised on each side about the other. I would bet that Blake didn’t love how the lawyer’s statement was and that the lawyers didn’t love how, I think, detailed maybe Blake’s direct statement was. At the end of the day,

I don’t think any of these statements are damaging, which is part of the thing to consider probably most when you’re putting something out is, is this going to hurt you in some really direct way? I don’t think so. I don’t know that it advances the ball in any way, but it also doesn’t create an additional risk. I do think that the pursuing attorney’s fees, travel damages, and punitive damages is a little bit of a, I don’t want to say veiled threat. That’s not fair, but it is.

to the Baldoni side, we’re not done.

Stacy (22:44)

Yeah, we’re coming for you. I agree, Emory, that’s a brilliant suggestion that you had that if she had framed this around helping others using the money for a victim’s fund or something like that, that could be a nice rehab to this greedy, you know, mogul reputation. And, you know, I can’t help but think about Taylor Swift’s sexual assault case that she brought against that radio station DJ and

One of the biggest factors in that case in terms of her credibility was the fact that she was not seeking big money. She’s a dollar. She got a lot of credibility and allegiance from that. So Blake maybe should have taken a page from that playbook.

Anne Marie (23:26)

I think it really says that there’s an authenticity with Taylor Swift and I don’t want to purport to be a Swiftie. I don’t know all of her music. I don’t follow her the way others do. I think she is a very smart and savvy business woman, but I think she is a

decent, upstanding person first and foremost. And that’s what you get there. I think, you know, we can sit here in armchair quarterback. Was it good? Was it bad? Do we like them? Do we not as much as we want until we’re blue in face and we’re going to keep doing that. hope you’ll stick with us and listen. But the reality is, is when people are out in the public eye, the simplest question to consider was do people find you friendly and factual? And I think that it’s almost always yes with Taylor. Some people don’t like her, but it’s very difficult to say, well,

she’s not believable. Where I think there’s so much is this true, is this not true, he said, she said, they said, well that’s their interpretation, this is mine in this case. Where she sort of took all of that out, Taylor took all of that out in her case because it was not seeking anything for myself except for the fact that somebody that did something wrong should be held accountable.

Stacy (24:33)

Okay.

So we’re teasing Taylor and we know that’s another big development in this case that one of the sort of Baldoni weapons was that they were going to bring the world’s most famous pop star into deposition to talk about dragons and all the threats that were available and all the arms that that Lively had at her disposal to shut down Justin. So shall we talk about the Taylor deposition debacle?

Anne Marie (25:03)

What practical and ethical and reputational risks do lawyers have to consider before seeking high-profile celebrity depositions like Taylor Swift? And that’s coming from the side of those seeking the deposition. And then on the flip side of that, if you are Taylor’s lawyers, what are you thinking about to attempt to avoid keeping your client from having to do this?

Stacy (25:24)

Well, so just back to the nuts and bolts of legal practice, you know, you cannot pursue discovery that is burdensome or irrelevant to the case. And I think one of the challenges that the Baldoni crew had, and when we get to Taylor’s lawyer statements, we’ll see, and and lively statements on the depot, we’ll see that that Taylor was not, despite Baldoni’s attempts to make her a key figure here, she was not.

Or that was, that’s the response that Taylor was really just not a key figure here. So then you have a burden. I mean, and this is the case with any deposition. see this a lot with what we call apex depositions where folks are trying to depose the CEO or very senior officers of a company. The folks seeking to get that deposition have to show that that that deposition is likely to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. When you have a figure and you don’t have facts that

really connect them to sort of the underlying dispute, is defamation, sexual harassment, et cetera. You know, they’re kind of swimming upstream. And then the other thing, and I, you know, hate to kind of bag on Brian Friedman, but they were not pursuing this diligently. If you read the court’s order, they sort of like had a phone call with Taylor’s lawyers, got an idea of her availability and assumed that that meant that she had agreed to show up.

And they sort of let the clock run. They were, you know, really not on it, so to speak with discovery and their other discovery responses are also delayed. And that is why this case is sort of floundering. Baldoni hasn’t even been deposed yet because they haven’t produced documents. So this is sort of a shock and awe with the $400 million lawsuit. you know, like I said, all sizzle, no steak.

Anne Marie (27:15)

Taylor Swift Garner’s headlines and that was I think their goal. I can’t imagine even if you know she is Blake Lively’s best friend and knows everything that occurred during this time how much of that would end up being material evidence and wouldn’t almost all of it be

hearsay. She wasn’t on set very often, if at all, I don’t think at all if I recall. She didn’t necessarily witness those things. She perhaps could speak to the distress that her friend may have been under, but also for Lively, if I were her lawyers I’d be fighting to keep every high-profile friend out too. I don’t know that how’s that beneficial except for to give Baldoni’s team wore a spectacle, which I think was ultimately what they were after. listen, Taylor Swift is one of the most well-resourced women in the world, and she is a businesswoman. And you better believe she’s got just about every law firm known to those of us in this world on retainer so that she’s got all the right people to fight all the right things. And even if you’re not the biggest name in the book, you’re going to fight being deposed. Anyway, nobody wants to do that. It’s not fun.

Stacy (28:21)

It is not fun. It is not fun having done it twice myself. So, you know, just big picture. I don’t think there’s anything special about the celebrity angle of it. Cause as I said, it does ethical obligations to pursue discovery. That’s likely to lead to admissible evidence is a requirement regardless. So you can’t use.

discovery as a tool of harassment. Courts don’t like that. On the flip side, they are usually quite generous and you know, because judges can get appealed if they exclude evidence. So it is again to me telling that the court didn’t find that there was a reason to give the Baldoni team, you know, more time to get their act together to get this depot done.

Anne Marie (29:04)

Taylor was nowhere near this and rightfully so. The Lively’s Lawyers statement on Taylor Swift’s deposition was as follows. Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie. She was not involved in any casting or creative decisions. She did not score the film. She never saw an edit or made any notes on the film. She did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024, aligning the biggest tour in history. Given that her

involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did. This document, Sapina, is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.

Stacy (29:48)

I love that. I love it. I think that’s a mic drop statement

Anne Marie (29:52)

There’s nothing missing in that for me. I think the comparison to the other 19 songs that were licensed in the film is key too because why wouldn’t you call all of the artists that are similarly positioned then?

Stacy (30:05)

framing and and you know again if they had some piece of evidence that you know corroborated this theory that you know Taylor was helping to you know helping lively take over the film and that might have you might have had a different ruling but I don’t think they’ve got the goods.

Anne Marie (30:23)

Even if Blake was seen at three concerts in a row, then making the inference that perhaps she was on the plane with Taylor between shows, maybe? But also, I don’t know if anybody watched any of the Ares tour coverage. I don’t think Taylor’s spending a ton of time chatting with her friends between shows. You know, it’s one show after another and they’re marathon events.

Stacy (30:45)

Well, and by the way, she was recording another album in sweet while So the fact that she would have anything to do with this movie is they just had an uphill battle to show a connection And I don’t think they did it. So, you know Taylor’s lawyers also Wrote a statement which is I think short and sweet since the inception of this matter We have consistently maintained that my client has no material role in this action further My client did not agree to a deposition

But if she is forced into a deposition, we advised after first hearing about the deposition just three days ago that her schedule would accommodate the time required during the week of October 20th. If the parties were able to work out their disputes, we take no role in those disputes. So again, you know, the Freedman team was just not organized. They’re just, yeah, hey, we can get the most busy pop star to come sit for a deposition, you know, on three days notice. What?

Like that is just really sloppy.

Anne Marie (31:46)

In terms of the statement, I like just facts.

It reads snarky to me, which I always appreciate. And it is just that, like so nice of you to consider the fact that we would bend over backwards to accommodate you and your lawsuit that we have nothing to do with. If that was going to be the TLDR, that would be the way I would write it. They’re right. The Taylor piece is ridiculous. To an extent, I hate that we’re talking about it because she doesn’t deserve to be dragged into it. But I do think it’s a really important point for anybody considering getting into legal action, whether as individual.

or corporate that yes you can try and bring in the world but if the world doesn’t have a clear piece to the pie they’re not going to end up there and it’s probably only going to cost you time and money and potentially damage relationships which when you’re dealing with lawsuits about individuals is bound to happen. Yeah.

Stacy (32:40)

Yeah, that was well said. It’ll be interesting to see what happens if our interests, our fatigue continues, or if there’s another explosive moment in this case. I do think that it’s wearing thin. And so if I was advising either lively or Baldoni, it would be like, let’s move on. yeah, Marie, I wanted to circle back on this. The court issued a kind of death nail, final nail in the coffin on Justin’s case against Blake just October 27th.

So you might recall that the court granted ⁓ Blake’s motion to dismiss his case, his $400 million defamation case against her. people may not know this, but courts typically give parties the opportunity to amend their pleadings, to change their lawsuit. If you, if your case is dismissed, if there’s other facts, if you have other claims. And so the court did that in this matter and Justin’s team did not.

take another bite at the apple, just just the 27th. They that was sort of the court’s deadline and they did not. And I am very fascinated by that because his counterpunch was a great way for him to reset the narrative. And now a court has finally determined that he has no claim. So what do make of that?

Anne Marie (34:01)

effectively the case for him is over, which he really came out swinging with his counterpunch. is a real shift. Now understanding the risk calculus behind the scenes is something that, you know, we don’t necessarily have the privilege of knowing all of the information that’s on the table, but I’m surprised that they didn’t amend their comp- Maybe it’s a cut your losses moment, but as I understand it, and please correct me if I’m wrong, the Lively team has the potential to try and seek attorney’s fee.

Stacy (34:19)

I am too.

There is a motion for attorney’s fees that are statutory by the way, I don’t know what they do. I really don’t know what Justin’s next pivot is going to be.

Anne Marie (34:40)

And maybe it is a reputational calculus of I don’t want to be in this anymore. This is not valuable to my family, my career, my objectives. But it really does seem like a departure from where the case started. I just can’t imagine that they’re done. Both Justin’s team, himself, his lawyers have really dug in in a way that this is sort of a unsatisfying conclusion. I hate to say that, but it’s a little disappointing as an armchair quarterback.

Stacy (35:08)

Yeah, but if you don’t have the goods, you know, and I, we talked about this earlier, you know, again, there is a specific statute that protects plaintiffs who bring forward concerns and complaints about sexual harassment. It’s a, you know, specifically bars defamation claims. And I don’t know if his team didn’t know what we didn’t realize that or just said, Hey, I’ve got to get something out there and get some sort of reframing of the narrative.

Anne Marie (35:35)

That raises the something that happens early in a lot of reputational issues with principles of saying, want to respond, I want to do something. Doing something will often make you feel better in the moment, but isn’t strategically the best choice. ⁓ happens, those conversations happen in sort of every case. And it’s, I’m sure somebody probably raised some potential risk of this might not be something we win, but you go in with a different attitude too.

You’ve mentioned this multiple times in many of the cases we’ve talked about, where lawyers are willing to run the long game, whereas the principals at the center of a lawsuit, whether that’s an individual or a company, often want to see action and conclusion much faster. And I think that’s even more the case when you’re dealing with an individual versus a company. And if I’m either Justin or Blake’s team, I don’t want to be doing this. This is not beneficial to me. ⁓

in the long term. What those risks are, what those challenges are, we don’t need to outline again. There’s, there are many and ⁓ we probably don’t even know the interplay of all of them at this juncture in time for either Blake or Justin.

Stacy (36:47)

It’s going to be really interesting over the next, you know, six, seven months. The case goes to dry allegedly in March, 2026. you know, Justin may have some defenses, but he doesn’t have any affirmative claims at the moment. So somebody needs to decide it ends with us now.

That’s it for this episode of Reputation Nation. Thanks for joining us. We hope you found this episode useful. Have a crisis you want to dissect on a future episode? Connect with us on LinkedIn or email us at repnat at dezenhall.com.

Anne Marie (37:20)

to more about navigating a corporate crisis or high stakes lawfare situation, or want more hot takes from us, subscribe to Des Reads and our take at Desenhall.com. And be sure to check out Stacy’s The Legal Department podcast for more legal insights at LegalDepartmentPod.com. Thanks for listening. See you next time in The Reputation Nation.

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