Lively v. Baldoni 30 - Keeping Up with the Jones's Lawyers

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:01 Clip: All rise. Court is now in session. Court is reconvened. I may be seated. Maintain order. The federal rise to face the jury and harken to its verdicts.

0:00:26 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Gavel Gavel. It is episode 30. Wow, we hit 30. Congrats, everyone. Good gavels to you. I'm Thomas. That's Lydia Smith. And is anything going on today? Any interesting podcast things happening?

0:00:38 Lydia: Well, first, we have to have a celebration of episode 30, and I would like everyone to do 30 gavels at home. Yes. Yep. Do a 30. A nice little 30 gavel. Yeah. We have a very exciting episode today. We are going to be talking to Maren Shaw and Kristen Toller, who

0:00:47 Thomas: In addition to the ones I already do every day? Yeah, okay, I'll add 30 to my reps. Yeah. Who are they?

0:01:01 Lydia: Are the lawyers for Stephanie Jones of Jones v. Abel, of JonesWorks, a major party that is involved in this legal saga.

0:01:11 Thomas: It's almost like we've set up a docket ahead of time to talk about this exact thing. Yeah, I'm excited. It's really cool of them to come on. What are we going to be talking about? What's going on?

0:01:15 Lydia: Well, there is actually something happening on a non -Jones v. Able docket. We have to go all the way over to the Northern District of California.

0:01:29 Thomas: Holy crap, we're jumping dockets again.

0:01:31 Lydia: We're jumping dockets. We'RE JUMPING DOCKETS. Yeah.

0:01:33 Thomas: This is the inception of dockets, docket -ception. We got to figure out how to get back to the original docket. And then when we do, how will we know that there's not another level of docket ahead of that one?

0:01:44 Lydia: Yeah.

0:01:44 Thomas: We'll have to spin the top, spin the gavel. And if the gavel wobbles, you know there's another docket, okay, that's it.

0:01:48 Lydia: But then it cuts to black too fast because Martin Scorsese doesn't want us to know for Inception.

0:01:53 Thomas: Martin Scorsese, I'm sorry, are you saying, thank you. That is not, there are no mafia men.

0:01:56 Lydia: No, Christopher Nolan. So sorry. No. You know why? It's because I was like, oh, Leonardo DiCaprio. And then I just thought Martin Scorsese.

0:02:03 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, it's fair, he is in a lot of those or whatever.

0:02:06 Lydia: I was also simultaneously trying to remember Matthew McConaughey's name because I

0:02:10 Thomas: He has nothing to do with that.

0:02:10 Lydia: Thought you were going for like an interstellar joke at first. And I was just like, oh, I don't know. I don' know. And then.

0:02:14 Thomas: And that would have been gotten you back to the director. So there are a lot of different ways you could have gotten there.

0:02:18 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, and I didn't.

0:02:20 Thomas: Anyway, Dock Exception,

0:02:21 Lydia: And so we're going to end up over in the Northern District of California. And it's going to become clear, I think, as they talk about what action is happening over there and why we're over in California for this issue that is happening between Jones Works, headquartered in New York, and Jennifer Abel as a party living in Beverly Hills. Why are we in the Northern District of California?

0:02:41 Thomas: Which is not north for any non-California people. They probably already knew that.

0:02:43 Lydia: It is not. It is not. But it will make sense when we start talking to them about what they are doing over there.

0:02:50 Thomas: All right. It's kind of our neck of the woods, actually.

0:02:52 Lydia: It is. It's a lot of fun. It really is.

0:02:53 Thomas: I'm in that federal court all the time.

0:02:54 Lydia: We should be. We should just go.

0:02:56 Thomas: I wish there was a reason, a good reason. I don't want to get sued or anything. Just check in. That's excellent. Can't wait to speak to them. If you'd like to support the show, patreon.com slash gavelpod. Skip the ads. You probably already heard this earlier. If you're not a patron, you didn't hear this earlier, I don't know. But one way or the other, you heard this earlier if you're a patron. So do that in the future more on patreon .com slash gavelpod. Thanks to those who support. And hey, thanks to those who listen and share the show, by the way. Even if you can't support, no worries. Share the show.

0:03:23 Thomas: Link it. Talk about it. You know, that's awesome. Review it. Give it a good review to counter the people who are mean.

0:03:30 Lydia: Yes, please.

0:03:30 Thomas: We need that sometimes. After this break, we'll get on with Stephanie Jones's lawyers. So excited.

0:03:40 Lydia: Today we are joined by some very exciting guests. We have Maren Shaw and Kristen Toller. They are Stephanie Jones's lawyers out of Coyne Emanuel. Welcome to Gavel Gavel, guys. Wonderful.

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0:03:53 Maaren: Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here and we appreciate the opportunity to talk about this with you guys.

0:03:58 Kristin: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

0:04:00 Lydia: Just very briefly, because I know we have a lot we want to dig into. Can you share, you know, when you joined the case prior to filing Jones v. Abel?

0:04:09 Maaren: Sure. So yeah, I mean, it shouldn't probably come as any surprise to you guys or to the lawyers that you might have as listeners to the podcast, but we were engaged before we filed the complaint. You know, there's often a process of investigating claims, putting together the complaint, readying it for filing, et cetera. So we've been involved in this case from Stephanie Jones's side and JonesWorks side as her lawyers from the outset of this particular issue.

0:04:35 Thomas: We've covered the beginnings of this lawsuit suit and it seems pretty serious, but what's the main thing you want people to know? I mean, there's so much here. There's so Much about kind of this anonymous online smear machine world that is really fascinating to us and the listeners. And we're getting a picture of it. Do you want to kind of lay out the landscape of your theory of the case here and what you're looking to do?

0:04:56 Kristin: Yeah, absolutely. We're happy to do that. I would say at a high level, you know, our claims are pretty straightforward. There were serious contractual breaches here by the defendants in our case, breaches of Wayfarer and Justin Baldoni's contracts with Jonesworks and breaches by Jennifer Abel, who is Jonesworks' former employee. So those contractual breaches we're seeking redress for. And then there's also very serious defamation and, as you said, a smear campaign against our clients that we also are seeking to uncover who's responsible and seek redress from those too. So at a high level, that's how I would describe our claims and our case.

0:05:40 Maaren: Yeah, and just to kind of pull back for a moment, you know, we've asserted claims on behalf of Stephanie Jones and Jonesworks, as Kristen said, against Justin Baldoni and against his studio Wayfarer, who were formerly clients of Jonesworks and who breached their contract with Jonesworks by unilaterally purporting to terminate it outside the contractual terms by failing to to pay amounts owed under the contract. It's very straightforward. We've also sued Jennifer Abel, who is Jones Works' former employee, also for breaching her employment contract with Jones Works in many different ways, including by stealing confidential documents and information, by soliciting Jones Works employees and clients, by failing to act with a duty of loyalty and in the best interest of Jones Works while she was employed there. And then we've sued those same defendants and Melissa Nathan, who I'm sure you guys know is involved in this and who runs a different PR agency called the Agency Group, for essentially, you know, what you might call like inducing these contractual breaches, essentially aiding and abetting the various contractual breaches by these various defendants. And then there's the defamation piece of this, which is both against Jennifer Abel for certain defamatory statements that we know she made against Stephanie Stephanie Jones

0:06:57 Maaren: And JonesWorks and based on a number of these defamatory websites and social media handles that have popped up all over the internet starting many months ago about Jones and Jonesworks, you know, for example, like www.stephjonesleaks.com, things like that.

0:07:14 Lydia: I think one of the things that's been really interesting about I mean, there's a number of things that have been interesting about this lawsuit. And honestly, like the whole suite, I guess, when you're looking at like Lively v. Baldoni and also Jones v. Abel regarding like the third party subpoenas, I feel like there have been so many that I don't know that I necessarily see a lot of them. And it's probably because these are more contentious in a lot of ways. But we had, you know, MJ Morley come on to talk about some of the subpoenas that you all filed with WhatsApp and Signal and Gab AI, I believe, which was new to me, kind of like a right wing social media messaging platform as like the overall company. But now we're also seeing with some breaking news from your team, we have third party subpoena that are out to Meta and Pinterest. And so wondering if you want to chat a little bit about what's going on there.

0:08:06 Kristin: For sure. So we serve subpoenas, as you just said, on both Meta and Pinterest. And in connection with those subpoenas, what what we're looking for is to find out who is behind the defamatory handles on those respective websites. So as Marna had mentioned before, there are websites that are out that are highly defamory to our clients, and certain social media outlets have linked to those websites. And so in order to track down who is beyond those websites, we serve subpoenas on those third -party service providers. As they often do, they have objected based upon First Amendment grounds. And so we were required to file a motion to compel in order to get the user information behind those sites.

0:08:52 Maaren: You know, I think it's important to note that the subpoenas that we had issued against Meta and Pinterest and a bunch of different kind of website hosting platforms and messaging apps and social media apps and things like this really are aimed primarily at getting subscriber account information. So, you know, we're not necessarily seeking like all messages, all content, all of that kind of stuff. It's really about finding out who opened these accounts. You know, what are the names associated with the subscribers on these accounts? And something that's a little bit unusual, at least with respect to this latest motion that we just filed is, as Kristen said, you know, for Meta and Pinterest, it's common that these social media platforms object as a matter of course to subpoenas, even though we're seeking very limited subscriber information. But what's more unusual here is that two third parties have also objected to the social media sites turning over the subscriber information, and these are two individuals, one of whom is employed by Melissa Nathan's PR agency still currently, one one of whom was until very recently employed by Melissa Nathan's PR agency. They kind of came out of nowhere and have objected as third parties. Exactly right.

0:10:05 Lydia: That's so crazy.

0:10:05 Maaren: I think you see where I'm going with this. Yeah. On the basis essentially that if Meta and Pinterest were to turn over the subscriber information, it would implicate their personal identifying information. So that is a bit unusual here. And I think as you might be following where I am going with this, begs the question of what what their interest here is in preventing us from knowing who's behind these just plainly defamatory social media sites.

0:10:32 Lydia: And it's such interesting timing, too, because these two individuals are also at the heart of the hearing that happened June 24th regarding a motion to compel in the Lively case, because from what I could gather there, they were meeting and conferring and kind of agreeing on terms. And then all of a sudden sort of changed their tune potentially. And we're putting up a little more roadblocks with what they were going to produce as a result. So that's the same individuals that we have here. So it's interesting.

0:11:00 Thomas: That's sort of telling on yourself. Maybe they ought to object to like some other unrelated related subpoenas somewhere else to. Oh, we just like objecting to subpoena. It's nothing to do with this case. Just like we think, you know, people shouldn't get this data.

0:11:13 Lydia: We're big into the First Amendment, you know.

0:11:15 Thomas: Yeah, it's a little confusing because it's like the third party squared. It'S like the ninth party. So it's A third party subpoena, maybe to cover the basics for the non-lawyers and the me's. I guess would this primarily be in the action against the John Doe's? So it'S like, you don't know who's done this. You don't knOw who's posted these defamatory things. You're kind of allowed in in our system to file that John Doe part of the lawsuit, putting those people on notice, essentially. And then you essentially don't know who to subpoena for that, really. Like you don't know, right? You can't like, unless you find somebody who's actually named John Dole. Yeah. Some poor guy. There's like one guy who's named this. God, all these subpoenas, I got stacks of them.

0:11:43 Lydia: That's why they're John Doe's.

0:11:51 Thomas: I don't Know what to do. Yeah, short of that. It's like, well, we get to file subpoenos to third parties to say, hey, can you give us you know, something and I know these speaking of piles of subpoenas. These tech companies, I'm sure, have millions of these a day. And so they're always going to be resisting any of that, which makes sense. So for those third party subpoena, additionally, third parties to that. So, you know, again, I don't know if that's sixth parties or ninth parties, depending on how the operator works there. They're saying, wait a minute, don't hand this over because no reason.

0:11:51 Lydia: Mailbox is overflowing

0:11:52 Maaren: You've

0:12:24 Lydia: It's even worse than no reason like right I mean

0:12:26 Thomas: No, I know because, you know, we will get in trouble, essentially.

0:12:31 Maaren: Got it exactly right, I think. And, you know, I'm not going to do the math on the third, sixth, ninth party subpoenas. But yeah, you know, part of our lawsuit, as we mentioned earlier, was filed against John Doe's 1 through And the reason for that, as you noted, is, you know, we have all these anonymous defamatory websites and social media handles that are just smearing our clients popping up online all over. And the problem when you have something like that, which is anonymous, is obviously you don't know who to sue because it's anonymous. And so something that you can pretty typically do in these situations is file against John Doe's, which, you know, as you know in the U .S. is what we colloquially call persons unknown, someone you don't know who they are, we call them John Do and Jane Doe, for defamation. And then you can issue third -party subpoenas, so not to the defendants or the Does, you don'T know who THEY are, but to other third parties who you think might have information that would help you identify who is behind the defamation, so that's exactly what we did in this case. We issued subpoenas to third parties, for example, the platforms that are hosting the social media handles that are spewing all this defamatory nonsense, asking them for the subscriber information that will help us identify who's behind the defamation. Now, to the second compounding part of this, you're right. Then there were even other unrelated parties, these two individuals who work or worked for Melissa Nathan's agency, who have now popped up objecting to these subpoenas to Meta and Pinterest seeking the subscriber information. And, you know, they weren't even named in the subpoena, just to be clear.

0:14:03 Thomas: I bet you think the subpoena is about you, don't you?

0:14:07 Maaren: Yeah, exactly.

0:14:08 Thomas: Are they allowed to tell the judge? I'm subpoening for a friend though. It's not, it's not for someone, someone I know said this shouldn't happen.

0:14:15 Maaren: Exactly, I mean, I guess we'll find out.

0:14:18 Thomas: You know, when these two individuals objected to the third party subpoenas, are you allowed then to just be like, Hey, we found dose one and two and just like add them as parties or like, what's the process of like them telling on themselves into being a party to the lawsuit.

0:14:32 Lydia: Makes

0:14:35 Maaren: Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty typical that in cases like this, if you do ultimately identify who's behind the defamation, you can add them as named defendants in your lawsuit.

0:14:45 Thomas: Yeah, but is it like, is it enough that they just objected? Or do you have to like get to the stage where somebody's produced something that has their name on it? Like, is it enough? Can you point to like, hey, they said it's going to implicate them? Or is that not enough?

0:14:57 Maaren: You know, I Think every case is different. In this case, you know, we've moved to compel the subscriber information from these platforms, and we certainly hope to get that. And I think we'll take it from there.

0:15:06 Lydia: Sense.

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0:15:14 Thomas: Stepping back though, I'm interested in like the privacy component of it. It's hard to ask you to give us a, you know, like a law school course in a couple minutes. But what is the state of privacy law regarding this thing? I mean, are you allowed to anonymously defame people on the the internet, or there might be the law, but there's also the practical consideration of what these companies even will give you or tend to give you, or even have, you know, they might sometimes say they don't have some of this stuff. Can you give us some overview of how this tends to work and what you might typically expect to get from these companies?

0:15:46 Kristin: I mean, and I think you raise really good and significant considerations, considerations, which I think underlie why you have the, in this case, Meta and Pinterest objecting. But those privacy concerns, there's a balancing. And so when you do have such clear defamation here, when youdo have, you know, statements which are being made clearly to defame and injure another party, you can make that showing to overcome what arguable privacy interests might exist. And I think as Mara noted earlier also, which is significant, is that we're we're not trying to get private messages or correspondence back and forth.

0:16:22 Kristin: It's merely subscriber information. So it's information about the email address that opened the account and other just identifying information about their subscribers. It is not, again, sort of personal messages.

0:16:35 Thomas: Interesting.

0:16:35 Maaren: Yeah, and in cases like this, every case is different, obviously. Every fact pattern is different. But courts have fairly routinely held in similar circumstances that subpoenas seeking limited subscriber information like this generally pass muster under any privacy or First Amendment concerns where there is, you know, illegality or defamation alleged.

0:16:56 Thomas: That's just what I was going to ask is, did they make you demonstrate that or what phase did it? Cause I can imagine, let's say if it's just as a hypothetical, like a bad actor, let'S say I've on an anonymous account. I've just been like, man, I hate, you know, Kevin. I just hate whoever I hate. I hate somebody. And it's not defamatory because, you know, people abuse our legal system. And someone who has a thin skin is like, I'm going to track down who said that they don't like me. What point in the process, again, for the non -lawyers among us and maybe for the lawyers in different, completely different areas of law, at what point do they make you demonstrate like that this is defamatori? Because it seems seems like that usually is like one of the later things to happen from covering these cases. It seems like you get a long way before you actually evaluate the facts of was this false? Was this defamatory kind of thing? So do they make you do that early sometimes in the cases of trying to subpoena third parties for this information?

0:17:46 Maaren: No, you know, you're right that oftentimes when you're talking about litigating defamation claims, like actually litigate the facts about what is true, what is not, is it defamatory, comes at later stages of the litigation. But in cases like this, where you're seeking to enforce third-party subpoenas for identifying information like we are here, the courts usually use, as Kristen said, a balancing test. And all you really have to show is that you have what's called a prima facie or good faith basis for alleging defamation.

0:18:19 Maaren: You don't have to go through a mini trial on the merits in order to get this information.

0:18:26 Thomas: So it's up to the judge to kind of be like, well, okay, if it's just, I hate Kevin, that's not defamatori denied kind of thing. They get to just put the reasonable hat on and be like no.

0:18:33 Maaren: Information, more or less. There's a fair amount of discretion involved here. And I think, you know, the more you can show that there is like a really good faith, well -founded basis for alleging defamation, you Know, the better off you're going to be in these kinds of motions.

0:18:46 Lydia: I have to commend you all on the specificity of the defamatory statements that you included because in covering, you know, all these lawsuits.

0:18:52 Thomas: In other lawsuits that don't exist anymore. It wasn't as specific. I don't see anywhere in anything that you all are connecting Jed Wallace to any of this. And I just am wondering, I know because people broadly following are going to be thinking, well, there's the Blake Lively part and there's Jed Wallace allegations and there're the shadowy Reddit, other social media manipulation allegations. Do you see these as connected in any way? Is it sort of you're just, it's John Doe's, you're not sure? Do you see this as broadly connected or specifically connected or just unconnected?

0:19:01 Maaren: Yeah,

0:19:27 Kristin: I mean, I think that goes back to the subpoenas that we're trying to enforce or through our motion today, the other subpoenas that we've referenced, that this was done anonymously. So it's very hard sitting where we are today to say, oh, yes, this is all connected. But, you know, it seems like there is a web out there and there appear to be connections. But that's what we're trying to seek and trying to figure out with these third party subpoenas that we've been discussing. You know, who are the folks who directly opened these? Who are the folks that are behind each of the defamatory statements that we have set forth in our complaint.

0:20:03 Lydia: Just as we're talking kind of more of these broad strokes, too, what do you all feel have been some of like the biggest pieces of misinformation that you've seen regarding this case or just regarding the whole situation? Has there been anything that stood out to you?

0:20:19 Thomas: We can relate when we went through a thing, when we saw people online spewing out of their butts and it was like, boy, even people you thought knew better. You're like, what are you talking about?

0:20:26 Kristin: Yeah,

0:20:25 Lydia: Especially people who listen to a law show and like...

0:20:30 Thomas: And I also worry that's going to be us. Inevitably, that was also us. Like, I'm sure we said some stuff that was not right. But yeah, there's got to be some stuff that bothers you, right?

0:20:39 Maaren: I mean, I think you know it's a very good question. I know you guys have been covering this quite a lot. And I think you Know as you've noticed there has been a lot of misinformation information out in the press and on the internet that's completely divorced from the realities of the case or from the legal process that's actually going on here. It's hard to pinpoint maybe the worst one, but I think there's been what we've seen is a lot of focus from the other side on the process by which some of the evidence that we've put in our complaint and some of the evidence that Blake Lively put in her complaint came to light. And I think what we take from that is, and speaking only for our case, we really haven't heard from the other side any real defense to our claims. Our claims are well -founded.

0:21:01 Lydia: Totally fair. Yeah. Mm hmm, Mm-hmm.

0:21:29 Maaren: They're strong. They'RE based on strong evidence. And we've really not heard a defense to any of this. The only thing we've heard is a lot of nonsense about leaking or subpoenas or how these text messages kind of came to light. And I think a lot of that, you know, to your point in terms of misinformation in the case is just a huge distraction. It's a bunch of wild conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality. But I think the main point of it is to distract people from focusing on what the actual evidence of wrongdoing is here.

0:22:28 Lydia: To like put it on the wrong docket is like, it just feels so weird.

0:22:31 Thomas: Well, what doesn't make any sense about that is like, it's one thing when it's Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. I understand at least the idea that like, okay, screw the legal stuff. We can win the PR stuff. But like in your guys' case, I don't really get how, like, it doesn't seem like it really applies the same way. It doesn't seemed like in Jones be able, that's going to make a whole lot of difference. So I don'T understand why they wouldn't maybe focus more on the law and all that. Does that make sense? I mean, it seems weird to me. It seems off.

0:22:59 Kristin: It absolutely makes sense. And I think it is, it's all about process. It's all about, you know, talk of subpoenas or the like, and there's nothing on substance. And I think that there's a clear reason for that. There's not an answer to what you see in the evidence that we put in our complaint. There'S not an ANSWER to the legal claims we've made. And so the answer becomes process and distraction and smokescreen and you know let's talk about all this other stuff around the edges rather than actually grapple with the very strong legal claims that we've made so you know we continue to see that to this day just more on process more on distraction and nothing on substance a

0:23:39 Thomas: It's crazy to me that they didn't already have this stuff though. Did discovery get stalled out or something? How how would they not already have, like, if I were on their side and this New York Times article comes out, one of the first things it mentioned is these were produced in relation to a lawful subpoena kind of thing. My first question would have been, okay, show me that. What happened? I don't know how much you can comment on that, but like, how has that not already been produced? I don't understand.

0:24:02 Maaren: Yeah, I mean, I think, you Know, we want to be careful around talking too much about what's going on in discovery in this case, because there is a a confidentiality order in place and we need to honor that. But discovery is not stalled. It is proceeding. We kind of are limited in what we can have to say about it, but I don't think any of your suppositions are wrong.

0:24:22 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:24:22 Maaren: And I think, again, to Kristen's point, this, at least to us, seems like kind of more of a distraction technique than anything that's truly aimed at getting to the merits of the various claims at issue here.

0:24:33 Kristin: Hundred percent I would say that this is you know again more on process and I would not assume that there's a lot of other substance behind

0:24:42 Lydia: Would love to hear your thoughts on, you know, we've talked about the misinformation elements here about the role that like content creators have been playing in this situation. I know you all, I believe without a crystal ball posted that, that you all sent a cease and desist to them.

0:24:50 Thomas: Hmm. Those assholes. Ooh.

0:24:58 Lydia: And so I would Love to just hear your Thoughts on what we're seeing in this day and age with content creators and the potential fueling of the misinformation or

0:25:06 Thomas: You know, legal podcast, just total bullshit like that.

0:25:07 Lydia: What's happening there.

0:25:09 Thomas: Just, you know, is

0:25:09 Kristin: That indeed I mean they they certainly run the gamut. I agree. I mean, there's been a tremendous amount of content creation. And unfortunately, we've seen exactly what you've said from a certain others, which is to say perpetuating untruths, perpetuating defamation, perpetuating things that we're not interested in talking about. Again, we'd love to get to the substance here, but they keep talking about process and they keep talking about defamation and wild claims and everything else that needs to be dealt with. And there is, as we've come to learn and understand, there is a world out there that is very willing to sort of support these types of claims and these like process considerations that the other side is raising that need to be dealt with as opposed to dealing again with the substance that we'd all like to get to.

0:26:02 Thomas: That cease and desist thing real? Or is that person just saying that? And is, where's the line like that's being crossed? I guess if I don't know what went into that, I don'T know the details of that, but what are kind of the lines there that on one side versus crossing over into the other side, I

0:26:16 Maaren: I mean, as Kristen said, you know, It is an unfortunate reality in this case, I think, that we've all come to recognize that there has been a tremendous amount of attention devoted to it, a tremendous amount of content creation around it. And a lot of, maybe not a lot of, but there are certainly elements of the content creation or amplification online that are just perpetuating falsehoods. So it's hard to speak in kind of general terms about it, but I think it's certainly fair to say, in terms of where's the line, you know, when things cross over into into just plain defamatory false statements, damaging statements that are being perpetuated with no good faith basis, with no truth behind them, at some point you do have to address that. And our position in the case, as it always is, is the facts matter here. They do. There is going to be evidence, there is goingto be discovery, and we're going to litigate this case on the facts and the law and not in the media. But it is our job to a degree to protect our client, protect the veracity of information out there, and facts matter.

0:27:18 Thomas: Imagine judges don't love this, but maybe they don't care as much. Is it kind of irrelevant or, and I also know there've been allegations probably all around about coordination with content creators I don't know how much of that is conspiracy theory or what about that line? I mean, is it the kind of thing where if any, and just again, you can deal in hypotheticals if necessary, but if any parties are trying to like feed information to content creators, who gets in trouble for that and where or not, you know? Yeah.

0:27:45 Kristin: Yeah, I mean, certainly from our perspective, you know, we're interested in the facts that are relevant to our case, we're interested in litigating our case. So we view kind of the content creation, everything that's happening on the periphery as noise and as distraction. But if something rises to the level of, as Maren was saying, just outright, you know, defamatory statements, lies being said, then that will be dealt with. But in terms of the substance of our case the merits of ourcase, you will deal with that in our case and try to keep all the kind of content creation on the side.

0:28:21 Thomas: Well, as you commented early on, I mean, it is hard because in Jones v. Abel, honestly, when we read it on here, when we went through it, I mean, It's pretty run of the mill. I don't know, you know, who knows, there's obviously I would in any case, and anyone should be open to seeing whatever evidence goes whatever way, like, we're not obviously part of it. We're not part of discovery. We don't know what's going on. But it seemed like, okay, this seems pretty cut and dry on the contract stuff. And so in some ways, I'd love to focus on just the facts of the case, but that seems pretty clear. And the stuff that's really more, I guess people are, maybe that's why they naturally want to gravitate toward the more out there stuff, you know, because it's a way to just kind of get away from the fact that like, yeah, it seems like don't use your work phone for stealing clients. I don't know. It seems like maybe don't do that.

0:29:07 Lydia: If there's nothing else that people take away from this, it's two phones are fine. Just have two phones. Goodness.

0:29:10 Thomas: Just don't. Yeah.

0:29:15 Maaren: Yeah, I think that's good advice across the board. Yeah, look, I think we live in kind of a clickbait environment nowadays for whatever that means, and I agree with you. I think the facts of our case are very straightforward. They seem pretty cut and dry to at us. There is overwhelming evidence of pretty straightforward contractual breaches and other tortious conduct. And that's what we are litigating. And those are the claims we filed. You can speculate as to why people might not want to focus on that or are not as interested in that. But I certainly think, unfortunately, the salacious conspiracy theories interest people and they gain traction, even if there's really no basis for them.

0:29:57 Thomas: Don't know if it's like a monkey's paw scenario or whatever. But it's cool. Hey, people are reading court documents and people are getting involved in like the legal system. And on one hand, you'd be like, oh, that sounds great. And then you see kind of the result of it. And it's like, Oh, man, maybe maybe experts should do this. You know, maybe maybe it's not good for every single person who has a phone to be able to broadcast themselves reading a document badly. Like maybe maybe there should be some some gatekeeping, I say as nobody who doesn't have expertise in it, but it's like, it feels like there's got to be some middle between only these elite few can ever tell you the wisdom of what the law means versus literally anyone's opinion is the same. Like there's got to быть some good middle of that. You know, it's rough. It must be rough as lawyers to see that.

0:30:44 Kristin: Well, we just very much appreciate, you know, folks who are paying attention to the facts and kind of are telling more than just the talking points from the other side. But yeah, I think if you let yourself get bogged down in some of that, it could get frustrating. But I think it's much of what you said earlier, like the claims that we've made, I mean, they are. With respect to the contractual breaches, they're pretty straightforward. They're pretty clear. And so we are focused on that. We're keenly focused on getting more facts out there to prevailing in these cases and just not letting a lot of that other side created noise, frankly, serve as any distraction on our ultimate goal here.

0:31:24 Maaren: And look, I mean, you know, you've seen a lot of vitriol directed against our client in the press and on some of these online forums. And I think it's certainly fair to say, like, Steph Jones didn't want to be in this position, right? She wants to focus on building a successful business, which she's done for many years. But when you're in a situation where there are very clear contractual breaches and wrongdoing, employees defaming her, smearing her reputation, trying to tear down her business, reneging under contracts, breaching contracts, stealing clients and former clients, aiding and abetting that and failing to pay under contracts. You know, at some point, she does have to stand up and protect herself and protect her business. Why anyone would take issue with a business owner asserting very straightforward legal claims for breach of contract where there was strong evidence that contracts were breached and that there were defamatory statements here? It's hard to see what the problem with that is or should be, notwithstanding a lot of the noise that you've seen online.

0:32:36 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:32:36 Thomas: I want to come back to something that I was going to ask earlier, and then I think we moved on to something else and I forgot. But when it comes to the Van Zandt subpoena, when it come to that original subpoena, I know I've kind of made the point that it does sound like getting really mad about people discovering your crimes. Just that's me making a joke. But like, it's weird to be more focused on like the timing of when, just in the Blake Lively case, like when or how Blake should have had access to this stuff that she should have had to anyway and discovery eventually. And so to me, I've Kind of downplayed the idea of the Van Zandt subpoena being done without any like notice to Jen Abel or to, you know, whoever. And that's been kind of their problem with it, I think. But if I'm trying to like steel man that argument, I do wonder, is there an idea that by doing it the way they did when you do these third party subpoena things, if the other side doesn't or whoever, I guess, wants to say they have an interest in stopping it

0:33:28 Thomas: In some cases, but if they aren't able to interact with it. If they aren't able to object because they don't know it's happening or something, is there a concern that then maybe too much is going over, too much information is getting shared, or there's going to be some way that it goes over the line and provides more than maybe should have been? Do you see that as a serious argument against this whole process and how the third -party subpoena, how they've been done in this case and maybe in the other cases?

0:33:28 Lydia: The Doe suits. Yeah.

0:33:52 Thomas: The dosage, yeah, that, that.

0:33:53 Maaren: Yeah, I mean, you know, we can't really speak to this particular instance in the Van Zandt lawsuit why it was done this way. That's really kind of a question for Blake's camp. But, you know, I think your question is towards the process generally. And as we talked about a little bit earlier on the podcast, when you're in a situation where there is anonymous defamation or anonymous wrongdoing, these types of dough lawsuits and then issuing third -party subpoenas to uncover evidence in terms of identifying who the defendant should be are a fairly common legal device here. And so I know there has been a lot of speculation online about the process and should it have been done this way? Can it be done thisway? And I think we should be clear about this. And again, just even apart from this particular case and this particular situation in general, there is no impropriety around Doe lawsuits and third party subpoenas. There's absolutely nothing unethical about it. There is absolutely nothing unusual about it, this is a very standard process. And I would note, even Justin Baldoni's lawyers have used Doe lawsuits and third -party subpoenas in the past in similar situations. So, you know, the irony of crying foul is a little bit thick here. But again, I think to your point, a lot of the focus on the subpoena and how these text messages were obtained really misses the point, which is what does the evidence show? They might be mad that when they wrote things down, people subsequently discovered what they wrote. They might be mad, right,

0:35:19 Maaren: That people have now come to learn what they did. But that doesn't change the fact of what they write and what they do.

0:35:17 Lydia: Sending

0:35:26 Thomas: So the judge isn't gonna be slapping handcuffs on Blake Lively, you're saying? Okay, all right, I guess.

0:35:30 Lydia: Her to prison. Yeah, it was

0:35:31 Thomas: That's your prediction. Friction.

0:35:34 Maaren: You heard it here first.

0:35:36 Kristin: Exactly. Bold predictions here.

0:35:40 Lydia: Kind of a little fun ride when we were reading through Jennifer Abel's counterclaims and some of the evidence that she chose to include there where I guess she spoke with an employee at Jones works. And I don't know if she was trying to ask for something, trying to ask for help regarding the case specifically, but she's buttering them up and they say, like, that's not what your work phone says.

0:36:00 Kristin: It's interesting when you talk about the counterclaims which we've now moved to dismiss it's almost you have to ask which version you know she has counterclaimed once we had very strong motions to dismiss and rather than try to fight those you know wildly different counterclaims have come out which we begin move to dismiss so yeah it's it's a little bit hard to even keep track of in that regard

0:36:21 Thomas: In the waning time, can you give people, I guess, I'd ask a few things. For one, sort of repeating the question, but just in case, as we're running out of time, what do you want people to know that they don't know? What do you Want people to be thinking about when it comes to the work you're doing here? And also, maybe give us like a what's next?

0:36:39 Lydia: Right.

0:36:39 Thomas: What can we expect when on on the, just roughly speaking, like what are the next steps? What do we want to look to the docket for next in this case?

0:36:46 Kristin: Yeah I mean absolutely and thank you again for taking the time and the opportunity I think in terms of what's next the litigation is continuing discovery is continuing continuing our motions will be decided, you know, in due course. And I think we will kind of see all of those events transpire. I think what we want people to take away is what we've talked a lot about today, our valid legal claims here, the contractual breaches that have occurred, the defamation that have occured, and that we are interested for our clients in righting these wrongs, in showing who's responsible and correcting all of these things that have been put out there unfairly, wrongly, and getting redressed for these contractual breaches as well. And so I think the takeaway from our perspective is really getting back to our claims, the substance and what we originally filed to do.

0:37:33 Maaren: Happy to weigh in on that, too. And I agree completely. You know, I mean, I think in terms of high -level takeaways. Look, our case is different than Blake Lively's case against the defendants in her case. Now, we're obviously in front of the same judge, and there are some overlapping facts here, but our case Is a different case, and our case has really founded on, as you noted, pretty straightforward breaches of existing legal contracts, pretty straight -forward evidence evidence of some real lies and defamation that is being put out there about our client. And that is not stopping, as you've seen. And so while Steph Jones's focus is her business, continues to be building an incredible business, she also does need to stand up for her business stand up for her reputation and stand up for the legal contracts that she stands behind.

0:38:25 Thomas: Absolutely. Hey, thanks so much for taking the time.

0:38:28 Lydia: Really appreciate it.

0:38:28 Thomas: We are definitely following it close and, you know, keep in touch. Thanks for coming on.

0:38:33 Maaren: Yeah, thank you guys. We really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you. And it was a real pleasure.

0:38:59 Thomas: Hey we found does one and two.

0:39:02 Kristin: I mean, they certainly run the gamut. I agree. I mean, there has been...