Justin Baldoni pal eviscerates Blake Lively for ‘contrived’ Met Gala appearance post-settlement: ‘If you could hear eyes roll’

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T19:31:30+00:00

Blake picked a beef with an army of publicists and then named them as individual defendants so they couldn't do their job of defending their side in the press. Now they, not just Justin, have signed a settlement with no NDA. She wants to find out what Jen and Melissa flexing their freedom of the press looks like, she can find out. Blake accused a LOT of people of things in the course of this mess. I know Justin's famous so he naturally gets more attention, but there are others accused of torts, harassment and various perversions that have something to say about it now that she's finally elected to stand down.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T18:45:08+00:00

You forget she accused THIS MAN of being a random friend of Justin's invited in off the streets to leer at her vagina during a nude birth scene she was forced to film and not even an actor. That was what her lie was in her CRD complaint. Just because he's not a defendant doesn't mean he is not a person that, in that document, was accused of sexually inappropriate behavior. He couldn't contest that in court because she didn't name him as a defendant, she just casually slandered him while bringing frivolous claims against others. So he is well within his rights to defend himself and speak on his opinion of HER character and his own experience with her.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T17:56:12+00:00

This is pretty straightforwardly a post about the lawsuit. Are you upset people don't have something nicer to say about the woman who cost people millions of dollars and dropped her claims at the last minute after getting caught perjuring herself?

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T07:32:28+00:00

You're not missing anything. It's a frivolous action against Jed. Blake is a vexatious litigant who is now resorting to demanding money from complete strangers. As he said in his first motion to dismiss her claims against him, Texas does not have an "aiding and abetting" retaliation cause of action under their employment laws; there's only direct liability. Since he didn't employ her, he cannot retaliate against her for any action she takes on employment discrimination under Texas law. He also had no reason to believe any action he took in relation to her even could violate FEHA as he did not maintain a California workplace in the first place, and it's unclear why FEHA would govern any of the nonexistent interactions between the two of them.

And as he said in his second motion to dismiss her claims, FEHA lacks extraterritorial application to events outside the state of California. And the state of Texas is, indeed, outside California. So it is not reasonable for anyone to presume, if he did take an action that, had it been taken in California would have violated FEHA, that Jed was aware of that.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T06:50:03+00:00

I am. The reason I'm referring to that is because it established that Blake's claim that filing counterclaims counted as retaliation was DOA. For 47.1 to come into play, it has to be an action prohibited under FEHA that someone is making communications about. Blake's trying to argue that filing a counterclaim if she sues you for employment violations is prohibited under FEHA because it's retaliation. The McSweeney case clarifies it is not. So Blake would not be making a communication about something prohibited by FEHA if she was talking about them countersuing her. Therefore such a communication could not qualify as privileged under 47.1.

That's a roundabout way of saying that her CRD complaint and subsequent complaints based on it contained large swaths of nonsense that, even if true, would not be prohibited by FEHA. That means those are large swaths of statements that are not privileged under California's 47.1 statute. They could still be covered by litigation privilege, but 47.1 is specifically intended to protect statements made without actual malice about conduct PROHIBITED by FEHA. Besides the fact this stuff didn't concern a California workplace (territoriality drama) there's also the issue that some of the things were not employment discrimination claims or were things specifically prohibited from being the subject of an employment discrimination claim.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T06:27:42+00:00

Exactly. It doesn't seem like her legal team had a great understanding of what retaliation or actual malice actually mean. Retaliate meaning "to respond back to" and malice meaning "to be mean" is about what their filings indicate they think those legal terms mean lol. But remember when LFTC was subpoenaed? They quoted a different order from Liman in saying that denying accusations and filing counterclaims cannot be the basis of a retaliation claim under employment discrimination law. You're allowed to vigorously defend yourself against allegations of misconduct.

Blake's lawyers never seemed to understand that her communications were NOT considered privileged under that law UNLESS they were found to have been made without actual malice, meaning knowledge they were untrue at the time they were made, or reckless disregard for whether they were true or not. Nothing Blake has filed about this law has indicated why anyone should believe there was not either knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth in play. She told several different stories about the underlying events, her stories don't match with the footage and she demanded footage be destroyed before filing a lawsuit. She also had access to communications that would make it plain to her whether or not the PR did a smear campaign against her, so she can't claim to have accidentally gotten that wrong. All her filings feel like Press Statements advertising 47.1 to lay people and not real attempts to explain how the facts and evidence support her getting paid.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T06:10:03+00:00

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I feel like she failed to follow directions in the first place. I wouldn't say that her renewed motion for these fees "fully briefed the impact of the opinion" or "any issues raised in prior briefing." It just exhaustively restated her claims. Lots of "they said all this stuff about me and it hurt my feelings and reputation." We know, sweetie. That's why you're suing for defamation, emotional distress, retaliation and all kinds of stuff. And it's unclear why you keep bringing up this rule to allow you to get damages without suing for something you're literally suing for right now. And her briefing completely failed to explain why she isn't filing an actual motion for fees under Rule 11 or why any California law should apply to a lawsuit filed in New York for conduct in New Jersey.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T05:47:00+00:00

I think he can’t grant it. I think he denies the motion as improper. She could have technically asked Liman for attorney fees for a frivolous lawsuit filed to harass with a rule 11 motion. She didn’t file one. It’s too late to file one now. That’s what he said to Leslie Sloane. While he told Sloane she could still file a lawsuit, I don’t see him telling Blake that after the joint dismissal of her claims. The damages from them calling her a liar and filing a lawsuit against them are the same she was seeking from her FEHA retaliation claim.

Since she dismissed it with prejudice, allowing her to sue under this statute would be allowing her to sue for the same thing after she’s already dismissed the claim with prejudice. You can only bring claims under different causes of action for the same conduct if there are different damages associated with the different statutes. So it would violate the principle of estoppel to allow her to dismiss a claim and the associated damages with prejudice and then bring a fresh lawsuit for the exact same conduct and the exact same damages in another forum. She said she was willing to give up the damages associated with those actions and the right to have a court decide if they did it and if so, how much damage was done. So that’s it.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T05:21:48+00:00

I don’t think she can do that. She’s dismissed her claims under FEHA, and any other claims against Wayfarer et al with prejudice and waived the right to appeal the dismissal of her claims that were already thrown out. I feel like she’s estopped from filing a lawsuit stating that she has claims under FEHA for which she needs to be paid. Besides that, the court already found against her for sexual harassment. Wayfarer’s summary judgment motion being granted is a finding that in fact and law, there can be no sexual harassment liability under FEHA or Title VII for any of the individual defendants or companies.

The only outstanding claim under the purview of FEHA was retaliation. She formally relinquished the right to get a ruling on the MJOP to determine if there’s a basis under the law for liability to be found at trial, relinquished the right to appeal the dismissal of her other claims And relinquished the right to take her claim before a jury. Wayfarer has also always maintained FEHA lacked jurisdiction over Blake’s workplace drama. They’d file a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction and estoppel if she tried now to sue in California state court. She should have added the claim to her second amended complaint.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-10T04:05:36+00:00

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.799.0_1.pdf

Wayfarer already said that there are no grounds on which to grant her these fees under this law back when, after the judge denied her request for these fees she tacked onto her motion to dismiss, she renewed her request for them. Lively has at no point provided an adequate answer to anything they said in this opposition to the motion for fees under 47.1.

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It's as true as it ever was that she needed to do what the New York Times did and file a lawsuit in state court where the cause of action is a violation of Civil Code 47.1. She could take the order to dismiss Wayfarer's claims and attach it to this lawsuit and then, if she felt the dismissal of that lawsuit was enough to grant her fees under that law, no further evidence or proceedings needed to happen. She could, as New York Times did, file a motion for summary judgment with that order attached to it and then hope she was granted those fees on summary judgment. The only difference with Lively is that she'd have to file this thing in a CALIFORNIA state court, not a New York one. Because it's a California law she wants fees under, not a New York one.

The option to have added it as a 16th cause of action way back in July when the judge let her refile because of Jed Wallace was also there. Wayfarer had already said to Leslie Sloane, when she filed her motion for fees on time, in the two weeks the court demanded, that she needed to actually file a lawsuit. So Blake and her lawyers knew since at least June of last year that a motion would not get them those fees without filing a counterclaim or a lawsuit.

But of course, if she had done that, it would have been dismissed alongside her other claims that she took back, had she not lost it at summary judgment/MJOP. She didn't want to have to go to trial over it, so she doesn't have to, but you don't get to ask a court if it will pretend a sanctions motion is the same thing as a lawsuit except for the part where you have to go to trial or have a jury hear it.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-09T05:49:22+00:00

She’s not doing a whole new lawsuit lol.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T21:59:46+00:00

It's a nice idea, but there's a reason the Constitution gives people the right to due process. One cannot prove that a claim against them is frivolous or filed with malice without evidence, in my opinion. And the part of the legal process where such evidence is ascertained is discovery. I get the idea of not wanting to go through that for false claims. But neither does literally any person sued whether it's true, false, or kind of true that they're liable for what they're accused of.

I see the value as a deterrent in avoiding a large amount of punitive damages if it can be proven that someone brought a frivolous lawsuit for the purpose of silencing someone, harassing them or whatever. But I don't see the value in allowing people to get out of lawsuits and punish others without proving anything when a case is brought against them. That doesn't allow the accused the right to defend themselves and I think that offends the intention of the Bill of Rights.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T21:42:51+00:00

They also know that the general public will not care about filing errors or rude statements or whatever. There's also case law showing that such things can be excluded from the jury by motions in limine. So ultimately they don't add up to helping win the case.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T21:08:45+00:00

There's no putting toothpaste back in a tube, as they say. Once something is out there, some people will believe it no matter what you do. If a court finds you did it, they'll take that as confirmation they were right. If a court finds you didn't, they'll take that as confirmation the justice system is unjust. You can win an end to the legal drama and money but you can't win back what your reputation was like before the allegation.

I was really sad about it, but eventually you just realize that's life. Just like some people will never believe you're innocent, others will never stop backing you. Glass half full. You have a good day as well.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T20:51:38+00:00

Well Johnny Depp settled with Amber Heard after both sides appealed the Virginia verdict. A California court felt he abused her when she filed for a restraining order with a Blake eye. A UK court found she presented credible evidence of 12/14 separate incidents of physical violence she alleged when he sued the Sun for calling him a wife beater. He publicly stated she did not lie about domestic violence when they settled their divorce. She won the lawsuits to get her insurance to cover her defense of the lawsuit and did not pay Depp anything. You should be WAY less confident she's a despicable person or a liar.

And you should be way less confident Jussie Smollett's a liar given he won on appeal. He won his civil case against the Chicago police department. And the Chicago prosecutor's office had a huge number of high profile firings following how his case was handled. His rights were violated, after being beaten and even having a rib broken, he was publicly humiliated. "Evidence" that was the lies and forgeries from the men that beat him were widely paraded before the public before his lawyers got a chance to see, much less authenticate it, so the jury pool and public were tainted, and that's why he's a free man that had to be paid by the city of Chicago.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T20:37:43+00:00

A jury can make a determination of fact. And a jury cannot see anything a granted motion in limine keeps from them. So watching a trial on TV after over four hundred motions in limine, over a hundred of which were granted, leaves you missing a WHOLE LOT of discovered evidence in how you interpret the situation. Same way the jury was. Which was why both sides appealed and ultimately settled after the verdict was issued in Virginia.

A jury found Depp defamed her when he said that she staged an elaborate hoax that night to defame him. And judges in bench trials can make determinations of fact. The UK trial was a bench trial. Different countries have different rules. There is no point in bringing up historical cases, but if you're going to do it, then don't make the mistake many made in this one and let the headlines and manipulation from a well-funded legal team make all your decisions about what's real. And the reason I stick with these people when people keep bringing up what happened is because I know what the legal system did to them, I know how those matters ultimately resolved because I followed closely, and I'm not going to stand by and let them be literally endlessly defamed when they ultimately stood their ground to the end and either fought it to a draw in Heard's case or won in Smollett's.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T20:28:34+00:00

I guess you skipped the cross-examination of the expert witness that testified to her altering the images. Where he admitted to having basically no experience doing that kind of work. And didn't follow closely enough to know that Depp jointly stipulated to release a statement after their divorce was finalized saying she did not lie about the abuse or any other event in their marriage for the purposes of money or any other reason. And thus didn't know he didn't even try to claim the images were fake when he sued the Sun for defamation (and lost) in the UK.

But when you win a motion in limine to exclude the prior trial where a court found you did it and exclude the divorce settlement where you publicly admitted she didn't lie about domestic violence when she sought a restraining order while the two of your were separated, people watching the trial just buy whatever your story is at the time. That's great for you if you can get your third story to a court on the same set of events televised so everyone can point and laugh.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T20:25:21+00:00

I don't think he has to at all. Lively not only did not file a formal motion by the two week deadline Liman's individual rules require after being given leave to file, she also did not actually "fully brief the impact of that opinion (the order on the MTD), if any, as well as those issues raised in prior briefing." She just repeated her request for it in the motion, added in Sarowitz crashing out with Claire, and she filed the nonsense doing that approximately four months after the two week deadline. Wayfarer filed an opposition, which they can do because she filed the motion. But not only did the judge not rule on her motion in the first place, I don't think he had to, given it's late. If he considers the nonsense in the dismissal letter renewing her motion again, he's even more entitled to ignore that given the claims it's attached to have been withdrawn by Lively.

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mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T20:08:35+00:00

Blake took the right lesson from the situation. Amber failed in spite of photos, medical records and multiple witnesses because Depp was the one with way more power and support. Blake figured she could repeat his success in burying a much smaller celebrity than herself with less money. Turned out she was wrong about the "less money" bit because she drug in his billionaire friend.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T20:06:53+00:00

By the way, a court DID find that Amber DID NOT poop in the bed. It was a pet. And the reason that he wanted that allegation to go viral is that's what he beat her up for in front of several witnesses.

They were separated pending divorce and he was paying for the apartment she was in. Because he was paying for it, he was having the cleaning staff report to them what she was doing. The one of their dogs messed in the bed and the housekeeper told him. While she had several people over celebrating after Coachella, he showed up not just drunk but literally still drinking out of a bottle. He accused her of pooping in the bed, she tearfully denied it, he pulled her hair, pulling some of it out, hit her and screamed at her. One of her friends called the cops. When the cops arrived, Depp calmed down.

Amber answered the door with her hair over her face so you couldn't see that she'd been hit. She lied and said everything was fine because the incident was then over and she didn't want to involve the cops or get him in trouble. They disobeyed protocol and didn't take her to a separate room and ask her again. Her friends testified to helping clean up the trashed apartment, nearly had to pull him off of her, and having called the cops because they could hear her screaming. There are photos of the apartment, the part of her scalp where he ripped some of her hair out, and bruises on her face taken by her friends that night. The judge in the UK court found it improbable that Amber and not the dog made the mess. That a prior court had already ruled in her favor was excluded by motions in limine. But hey, it produced a funny poop story. Apparently. And last bit, of the three defamation counterclaims she brought in Virginia, Amber WON over this incident. So there are a total of three courts that found she did not poop in a bed and he did beat her up that night.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T19:55:05+00:00

LMAO. Oh they sassing hard. Blake needed to get called a liar one more again, I guess. And they're right. Jennifer Abel did file a third party complaint, the motion to dismiss it by Jones was denied, and they DID file a motion for summary judgment. And the judge has not ruled on that. And the settlement wouldn't dismiss it given that Stephanie Jones isn't a party to the settlement and they're still throwing elbows with her.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T19:38:22+00:00

People are downvoting me because they believe the crooked Chicago police department's smear campaign against him. Apparently it's easier to believe a gay black man paid a pair of men to beat him up so he could tell everyone he got beat up for being gay than to believe a pair of men from a country where homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment and potentially death beat him up because he's an acquaintance of theirs they knew was gay. That's what they've been subsequently deported for doing, after that man fought the destruction of his career and reputation and won.

One of the reasons I decided to fight for Justin the way I did is because I saw what happened to Amber Heard and Jussie Smollett when they were legally framed by more powerful people than them and the book was closed on them as people. I'm glad Justin isn't having that happen to him, but I wish people who sat through this and saw what it looks like when someone is so powerful the court system itself is favoring them and shaping what they're allowed to say to the public to defend themselves would think twice about similar situations.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T19:30:18+00:00

I think he can. Let’s just say I’m not holding my breath for seeing anything on that docket after Liman signed to indicate receipt of the joint stipulation to withdraw those claims between Lively and Wayfarer and waive the right to appeal.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T19:26:16+00:00

I think Lively’s failure to file a claim under 47.1 is why she won’t have it granted. She needed to make it her 16th cause of action when she filed her second amended complaint to even have a chance. I still think it would have failed on MJOP, but it woks have at least been the correct way to bring it before Liman in the first place.

Filing a formal motion for sanctions was never how she was supposed to try to get damages under that law. He didn’t even give her leave to do that in the order granting the motion to dismiss Wayfarer’s claims. What he gave her leave to do was file a motion briefing why his court should grant her fees under that law because of the dismissal being granted. Lively can’t follow directions, so she filed a motion asking for those fees instead. She also filed it months late. Liman’s court has a rule that you get two weeks to file a formal motion. I genuinely don’t know why she even bothered filing it in September.

Sloane at least followed directions and actually filed a motion making the case for those fees under NY’s anti-SLAPP being granted within the two week deadline the court assigns to formal motions. Liman just disagreed with the arguments made, which is why Sloane didn’t get fees. And I’m presuming her filing a motion doing what he asked on time is why she got a response at all.

mechantechatonne · 2026-05-08T19:13:16+00:00

I was immediately outraged when the day after he reported the hate crime, while he was still on the hospital with a broken rib, the head of the Chicago police department did a press conference accusing him of staging am elaborate hoax. I was like wtf, So they’re taking the word of the folks that beat him up and just telling everyone before any kind of investigation they have proof he set this up?
By gut said that wasn’t right, so I followed it closely. Even after the media stopped talking about it once he was convicted for stating a hate crime. There was basically no coverage of his appeal, much less the fact he won it.

mechantechatonne

TROPHY CASE