You are listening to the Daily Roundup here as part of the Reality C Podcast. I’m your host reality. Steve. Thank you all for tuning in on this Tuesday. Since there’s not a ton going on in Bachelor Nation right now that I have any info to give to you, I wanted to hit on this major development in the Baldoni Lively case that came down yesterday as Justin B’S $400 million loss countered suit against Blake Lively and his $250 million defamation suit against the New York Times was dismissed yesterday in court by a judge.
So of course, I’m gonna bring on Rachel Juarez to discuss. What she thinks about this dismissal. Was she surprised? Was this a setback? Was it a devastating blow for the Baldoni team? What does she think about it all? We will get to all that momentarily with Rachel, so yeah, I know this is a big deal for me.
I was very interested in this case back when it first started. For about a week, and then when all the motions started going back and forth, and it became this absolute smear campaign coming from both ends, I covered it. Rachel and I did a whole hour live one time with it and took questions and all that, but then it got to be too much for me.
And I saw how much hatred and vitriol was coming out and the name calling and the mud slinging on both ends. What lively was doing to bald, what bald was doing to her. I was like, okay, I don’t want to get involved in this. I honestly don’t care that much. I re, I, I was more disappointed because as you know, I became infatuated with it ends with us.
That was the name of the movie, right? I’m already blank. I’m already blanking on the fricking movie. It ends with us, right? That was the name of the movie. Anyway, I became infatuated with it. Remember I did a, a YouTube live about it and I really, really liked the movie and then it turned into I wasn’t supposed to like the movie ’cause Blake Lively.
Promoted it wrong, and I was just like, all right, this is getting completely out of hand. And I don’t know anything about Blake Lively in her private life or how she is and all this stuff. So I just kind of was just, I’m. Dismissing this. I’m, I’m moving on. It was getting to be too much, and, but I know it’s a very important case that I think you want to hear legal advice from not just my opinion on something that I haven’t really followed very closely.
So that’s how I bring Rachel on today. And I don’t wanna spend, obviously too much time setting this up because let’s just get right into it. So today’s daily roundup is with Hot Benches Rachel Juarez. All right, let’s bring her in. She is one of the three judges on Hot Bench. You will see her probably every day on your television set, two times a day, wherever, check your local listings.
And then season 12, she’s currently filming, which will begin in the fall. It is Rachel Juarez. Rachel, thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having me.
Or should I say. Rachel Ez. Like Ginger,
what the hell? Oh, don’t
even, don’t even go there, Steve. I don’t even understand. Like, is he trying to be funny? I don’t even get why he says your name like that.
What? What’s the point? Do you know? I have
no, I, no, I don’t. I mean, if he was trying to actually give it an ethnic pronunciation, he would attempt to roll his RI suppose, and he would pronounce it slightly differently, but he, he just sounds like he’s like, like a choking tote or something. I don’t know.
Yeah.
Well, I guess we’re done hearing from him since he scrubbed everything that he’s ever said off the internet.
I mean, I know we’re not supposed to be talking about Laura Owens, but like, you know, it, I, everyone’s been saying, what do you think of Laura, you know, getting rid of all her stuff online? And I said, well, she finally has a lawyer that knows something, but apparently he doesn’t know about the way back machine.
Yeah. Because taking it down now is a little bit too late, you know?
Well, the, well the other thing is, and you know, we’ll, just briefly on this, I mean, we don’t know for sure why Jerris did this. ’cause he’s not talking, he doesn’t put out a video, but we assume. That Laura’s new defense attorney probably said, dude, you’re not helping in any way, shape, or form her case.
Please eliminate everything you’ve ever said about this case. I, I gotta believe that had to be something to do with it because David Ingris wouldn’t just decide, you know what, all the tweets that I sent out insulting everybody and all the videos they put out there claiming to be right about everything.
I’m just feeling like taking him down, like I gotta believe he’s been told to do that. Right.
1000%. Yes. Whether it was in an adversarial way or in a friendly way, I don’t know. But yeah, there’s no other explanation other than her criminal attorney said, what is going on? Take all of this down now.
Yeah. Okay.
That’s all we needed to know. I, I mean, I, we we’re just assuming, but it just knowing David Ingris and his ego and all the things that not only he said for the last eight months, and then once he started. A YouTube channel. It was just like he was standing behind everything and doubling and tripling and quadrupling down.
Why all of a sudden would he just get a conscience and be like, yeah, you know what, maybe I shouldn’t have it out there. No way. He was told to take that down for sure.
Absolutely. He didn’t get a conscience and he didn’t somehow, you know, get a, get a thin skin. Right. It’s not like, oh, people are saying he’s stupid, so he wants to take it down.
Like people have been calling him stupid for a while, so, yeah.
You know. Alright, so I wanted to have you on to talk about the big news yesterday. I. On a case that I followed for about a week and then just gave up ’cause there were so many motions. But yesterday Justin B’S $400 million Countersuit against Blake Lively was that was for Extortion and Defamation was dismissed.
And also along with his $250 million defamation suit against the New York Times was dismissed. So before we, before we jump into it and get your, you know. Quick hot take on this. First question I have is how often a percentage wise are motions to dismiss granted, especially in a big case like this?
Okay, so I guess we’re, we’re gonna have to get into the, you know, the details a little bit here, but when you say motions to dismiss being granted, there’s a big difference between how you can grant them, you can grant them with prejudice or without prejudice. So if you grant a motion to dismiss with prejudice, it means that’s it.
If you sued someone for breach of contract, that claim is dead forever. If you grant it without prejudice, it means, look, there was something deficient in the pleading of the claim, but you can have another shot. Okay? I would say that most cases, probably not most, a good number of cases. Have a motion to dismiss without prejudice where the judge says, you know, you didn’t quite adequately plead claim number four, but I’m gonna give you leave to amend.
That is common, very common. A case like this with this, you know, with these kind of attorneys and this kind of money behind it being thrown out at the pleading stage because a lot of these claims were dismissed with prejudice is very unusual. Very unusual. That’s really the only way I can put it. That’s not the case with smaller claims filed by pro pers, things like that.
A lot of those get tossed, especially in federal court, but you don’t see a lot of these kicked at the pleading stage.
So there’s 130 pages of this dismissal. I know you’ve read a lot of it. You haven’t gotten through all of it, but you’ve read enough of it where you have a good idea. And I guess again, your hot take on, is this a big deal?
Is this a major loss for Valone? Is it more of a setback? How, what is your overall take on what this does to the Valone case?
So I think big picture A, this is a big setback and anybody who says differently is. Either not fully versed in the law or trying to resurrect the case that they feel is the more equitable one, you know, trying to, trying to ignore what’s actually happened here.
This is a huge setback for bald. It’s not the end of his case. He could still have some claims to assert, but this is bad. My other big take is I’m shocked at how this happened.
What, when you say it’s bad, I guess, describe why is it bad for him?
So the core claims that he was asserting here, conspiracy, fraud, defamation, those are gone.
The judge has dismissed those with prejudice, which means that the judge has determined that he failed to state a claim and that no claim could ever possibly be stated. And in essence, that it would be futile to let him sort of fix the problems with the claims that were pointed out because they can’t be fixed.
So he has lost a number of his most significant claims, completely, like no chance to replete them. They’re gone unless there’s an appeal of this dismissal order, which there will be. Oh yay.
Appeals we.
Yeah. There will definitely be an appeal of this, but no, they’re gone. The judge has said, you know, absent an appeal or being overturned, those claims are dead forever, and that’s a big loss.
Even if one or two claims have survived, they’re much smaller claims.
So I’m sure you saw Blake Lively’s lawyer’s statement calling the decision a total victory and complete vindication. Justin and the Wayfair parties dragged into their retaliatory lawsuit, including Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Sloan, and the New York Times.
As we have said from day one, this $400 million lawsuit was a sham, and the court saw right through it. We look forward to the next round, which is seeking attorney’s fees. TRE damages and punitive damages from the Wayfair parties who say they perpetrated this abusive litigation. What did you make of their statement?
Yeah,
I mean, this is not a vindication of Blake Lively. It’s nothing like that. And the reason for that is because one of the main reasons for the dismissal of these claims was the court saying that like, look. Even if everything that she said about him in her CRD complaint was a lie, that can’t be the basis for a defamation claim.
And I think most of us lawyers, especially those of us who have practiced in federal court, expected that there would be some problems with a lot of his defamation claims. But that doesn’t mean that what she said was true. It just means that under the law, you can’t sue somebody for defamation in connection with something they’ve said in a lawsuit.
And you can imagine why. Because otherwise, if that was allowed, everybody in a lawsuit would sue each other, say they’re lying and have tag along defamation suits. It would be a disaster.
Yeah. Well. I noticed in my Twitter timeline yesterday, a bunch of people responding to B’S suit getting dismissed. And I wanna read you some of these tweets.
’cause they’re all Pearl Baldoni. They’re all Pearl Baldoni. And I don’t even know who these people are. They’ve probably been covering it way longer than I have and, and whatever. I just wanna read you some of the things that they’re saying. One said Justin’s case was dismissed, but that doesn’t mean he lied.
It means the system favors the louder voice With more power, Blake gets headlines in support. He gets shut down. Fair, not even close. Hashtag Justin Bald. This person says, Justin Bald stood up to immediate giant Hollywood Power Couple and the narrative he believed was designed to destroy him. Today, a judge dismissed his lawsuit.
The judge ruled the NYT had no motive to misrepresent baldon. The NYT used Blake Lively’s unproven allegations as fact, then dramatized them for clicks. That’s not journalism. That’s storytelling at someone’s expense. Baldon alleged they cherry pick texts and emails to make him the villain. The court didn’t say he was lying, just that the times was allowed to frame the story their way.
This case wasn’t about winning headlines, it was about fighting for reputation. Even when the system stacked against you, Justin Bald took the risk reminder, Blake g Lively’s claims have not been validated in court. They’re just still that claims and Justin Baldoni has moved to dismiss them. Say what you want about the legal outcome.
Justin Balone showed courage taking on billionaires, bad press and a broken system that matters. This one says so Blake Lively gets to potentially wreck Justin B’s life. And there’s no recourse facing your accuser. Nope. That’s trash. When Ryan Reynolds eventually gets accused, remember quote, her accusations of sexual harassment were legally protected.
End quote, believe accusations. And then the last couple were Today’s news marks an important lesson. You can make false claims of sexual harassment against someone as long as you know how to protect yourself legally. Blake Lively, may not have won. May have won her motion to dismiss because of her strategic litigation privilege, but it’s not because she’s fighting for women.
And then the last one, calling someone a sexual predator should come with consequences, especially when there’s no proof. Justin Baldoni pushed back and the system didn’t care. So clearly these are people that have probably been on Justin B’s side since this case broke.
Absolutely it, but it’s a vindication of his strategy, which was, as I said from the beginning, the complaint that was drafted by B’S attorneys, by Brian Friedman.
It was immediate tool. I mean, it was also a, it was also a cross complaint. Yeah, right. But it was, it was a press tool. And I think a lot of what the judge has said in here about how poorly it was pled is, is a, is a shot across the bow because of that, you know, I, I see, I saw what you did. You’re not gonna use my courtroom that way.
It was not a well pled complaint. It was a great press tool. And look, if this is, if this is how this is gonna be spun, they made the right call. You know, filing a complaint. I mean, arguably right, but you know, it, it gives at least tentatively some support to the call they made to issue a complaint or to draft a complaint that would win the press war as opposed to one that would necessarily survive a motion to dismiss.
So he was more out to kind of just shoot back at her because she filed a lawsuit against him. He just wanted bad press out there for her and. Do you think, do you think that Freeman thought ultimately, like I, I know it’s hard to say if Freeman thought he really was going to win and this wouldn’t get dismissed, but like you said, he kind of was like, well, this is kind of what they were after they were trying to win this thing in the court of public opinion, and it was drafted kind of poorly and he probably wasn’t going to do.
But it’s all out there now that you know, more people are siding, at least in court of public opinion, seemingly with Justin Baldoni. So. In that case seems like it worked kind of.
So I would say that probably they counted on the ability to amend. To cure deficiencies in the pleading because what has shocked me about this, I, I find this decision shocking.
I don’t know if all lawyers will, but I find it shocking that it was dismissed without leave to amend. And I think they probably assumed they would get to cure any defects in the pleading because that is the norm. You know, that the judge says, look, you have an adequately alleged that, for instance, Ryan Reynolds had malice.
I. Which he needs to have when he calls Baldon a sexual predator.
Yeah.
But, but this, but Judge Lyon went further and said, you could never adequately allege that. So that, which I, I find to be insane. You know? I mean, I think, I think it probably was adequately alleged, but if not, if the judge wanted a more con, clear and concise statement of malice, that’s, that’s a very.
Easy thing to cure in an amended complaint. And the federal rules of civil procedure favor liberal amendment of complaints, not kind of Gotcha. You forgot those words, you know?
Hmm. Well, the judge did note that they can still amend, but just claims for breach of implied covenant and courteous interference if they choose to with a deadline of June 23rd.
That’s kind of small potatoes. On the, on the grand scheme of things for this, right, for what they originally were after
the, the tortious interference claims, depending on how they’re more specifically pled, those could be significant depending on how they plead them, because it has to do with basically interfering with a contract, you know, and, and that could encompass a lot of this behavior.
And they absolutely will try to do that. I mean, it will be devastating. If he doesn’t have any claims, survive dismissal. I mean, it will be, it will change the entire future of this case if there are no counterclaims. So, yes, it’s not, it’s, it’s a loss, a big one. And, you know, one claim that is potentially significant could survive.
But I mean, this is, this is a, a rough loss for him.
