Even by Donald Trump’s standards for frivolous defamation lawsuits, this one is impressively stupid. On Monday, the president filed yet another lawsuit against the NY Times—this time seeking $15 billion over a book that claims he’s not quite as successful a businessman as he pretends to be.
The timing is almost comically bad. Trump is suing over allegations that he’s not actually that successful… right after winning the presidency in a landslide and making absolute bank while doing it. Has there ever been a sorer winner in the history of politics? You’re the fucking President. Get over the fact that some people criticize you already.
Trump has a decently long history of suing media outlets over unflattering coverage, including multiple failed attempts against the Times. Just last year, he had to pay nearly $400k in legal fees after another bogus lawsuit against the Times failed. But why let past failures slow you down when you can file an even dumber one?
The lawsuit is against the NY Times and book publisher Penguin Random House, along with some reporters at the NY Times. The complaint is… well… it is not the most organized or professional of complaints. It is, as so many Donald Trump lawsuits seem to be, political documents designed to please Donald Trump and his legally ignorant MAGA base, rather than convincing judges.
The complaint reads more like a press release than a legal document, packed with ego-stroking passages that reveal just how pathetically thin-skinned Trump remains. Consider this actual paragraph from a federal lawsuit:
Thanks solely to President Trump’s sui generis charisma and unique business acumen, “The Apprentice” generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and remained on television for over thirteen years, with nearly 200 episodes. “The Apprentice” represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump’s singular brilliance, which captured the zeitgeist of our time.
And, yes, that picture is included.
The complaint starts out by claiming that the NY Times endorsing Kamala Harris was a form of “election interference” which is not how anything works.
President Trump trounced Harris with 312 electoral votes and a sweep of all seven “battleground” states. This victory was remarkable for many historic reasons, including because President Trump had to overcome persistent election interference from the legacy media, led most notoriously by the New York Times.
That’s literally in the first paragraph of the complaint (though the claims themselves do not revolve around election interference, but even weaker claims of defamation). But, admitting that you won the election already undermines the idea that there was any damage done to Trump’s reputation from [checks notes] political reporting on him (historically some of the most protected of speech under the First Amendment.)
Indeed, Trump is going to have a pretty difficult time showing “damage” done to his reputation here. He claims that the NY Times tried to do three things:
Defendants’ pre-election goal was to kill three birds with one stone: (a) damage President Trump’s hard-earned and world-renowned reputation for business success, (b) in the process, sabotage his 2024 candidacy for President of the United States, and (c) prejudice judges and juries in the unlawful cases brought against President Trump, his family, and his businesses by his political opponents for purposes of election interference.
If that were true (and it isn’t) then they failed on all three counts. Trump won the election easily in 2024, he’s making absolute bank while being President (perhaps more than doubling his wealth) and all of the lawsuits against him have basically been shut down with Trump coming out on top.
Also, for anyone who has followed the NY Times’ repeated (and somewhat pathetic) attempts to bend over backwards to appease Trump and sanewash his attempt to bring fascism to America by pretending it’s politics-as-normal, this following sentence is ridiculous:
Today, the Times is a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.
There is no one who has followed the NY Times’ willingness to “both sides” every crazy thing Trump does who actually believes that.
Then, after nearly five pages of screaming about how liberal the NY Times is, the lawsuit finally says that this lawsuit is not really about the NY Times at all, but rather a book written by two of its reporters (hence the Penguin Random House inclusion on the defendants list).
The subject matter of this action—a malicious, defamatory, and disparaging book written by two of its reporters and three false, malicious, defamatory, and disparaging articles, all carefully crafted by Defendants, with actual malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage upon President Trump, and all published during the height of a Presidential Election that became the most consequential in American history—represent a new journalistic low for the hopelessly compromised and tarnished “Gray Lady.” Defendants’ pre-election goal was to kill three birds with one stone: (a) damage President Trump’s hard-earned and world-renowned reputation for business success, (b) in the process, sabotage his 2024 candidacy for President of the United States, and (c) prejudice judges and juries in the unlawful cases brought against President Trump, his family, and his businesses by his political opponents for purposes of election interference. With President Trump having won the Presidency, Defendants’ goals remain similar and unlawful: tarnish his legacy of achievement, destroy his reputation as a successful businessman, and subject him to humiliation and ridicule.
Specifically, on September 17, 2024, Penguin published a false, malicious, and defamatory book titled “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success” (the “Book”), authored by Craig and Buettner.
Dude. You won! Has there ever been a sorer winner in the history of politics? My goodness.
Before diving deeper into this mess, it’s crucial to understand what Trump actually needs to prove. As a public figure, he must show “actual malice”—and despite what Trump’s lawyers seem to think, that’s not about being mean to him.
Actual malice requires proving the defendants published something they knew was false or with reckless disregard for the truth (and reckless disregard also means something different than most people assume: it means you have to have ignored evidence that what you were publishing was false). It’s an extremely high bar, deliberately designed to protect robust debate about public figures. It has absolutely nothing to do with being angry or hostile—which is what Trump’s very bad lawyers seem to think it means.
Defendants each desire for President Trump fail politically and financially. Each feels actual malice towards President Trump in the colloquial sense: that is, each—Craig, Buettner, Baker, and Schmidt, as individuals, and the Times and Penguin’s relevant executives as corporations—subjectively wishes to harm President Trump, and each wish to manipulate public opinion to President Trump’s disadvantage to worsen his current and future political and economic prospects. Put bluntly, Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way.
That final sentence—”Defendants baselessly hate President Trump in a deranged way”—reads like it was written by a sixth grader having a tantrum, not a lawyer filing a federal lawsuit. More importantly, nowhere in this 85-page screed do Trump’s lawyers actually demonstrate the knowing falsity or reckless disregard that the law requires.
They describe completely typical best practices in reporting as if they’re nefarious, such as the following:
Likewise, the Times and its reporters, including Craig, Buettner, Baker, and Schmidt, have a pattern and practice of contacting President Trump and his team regarding negative stories on a short timeline so as to be able to state that they sought comment—in order to preserve a scintilla of the pretense of neutrality—while making it functionally impossible for President Trump to comment on stories with factual errors, correct those errors, or provide a responsive quote before publication. This policy further enables the Times and its reporters to publish negative assertions about President Trump about which they subjectively harbor doubts as to their truthfulness by permitting them to claim that they sought factual confirmation or denial regarding their stories, even when they subjectively realize that they did not do so in good faith.
Again, that’s not how any of this works, and it’s certainly not how the NY Times’ reporting works. I have plenty of criticisms about the NY Times and its coverage, but the idea that they do this for the reasons stated is ludicrous.
The incredibly weak attempt to argue for reckless disregard… is to claim that because they didn’t interview producer Mark Burnett about Trump’s time on The Apprentice, that’s a form of ignoring counter evidence.
For non-exhaustive examples, and as detailed supra, Defendants published numerous statements regarding President Trump’s role in “The Apprentice” without first securing an interview from primary sources senior to the production of The Apprentice, such as Burnett. Defendants knew that Burnett would likely have contradicted numerous specific false, malicious, and defamatory purported statements of fact that they made regarding President Trump’s role in “The Apprentice” as well as their general narrative regarding President Trump’s role in the show’s success. Defendants therefore did not sufficiently pursue speaking with Burnett even after he did not grant an interview, did not sufficiently seek to obtain his original notes or records, and otherwise failed to engage with Burnett and other potential insiders with “The Apprentice” because they subjectively believed that these sources would have tended to contradict the defamatory lies that they wished to publish about President Trump.
Again, this is not how the NY Times works. If Burnett would have spoken to them (and historically he has refused to talk to the media about Trump beyond a single press statement he made before the 2016 election), the NY Times would have loved it and would have quoted him extensively, as that would be a huge scoop, given how often Burnett has refused to comment on Trump.
There’s also a whole tangent building off of Tulsi Gabbard’s ridiculously misleading statements earlier this year, falsely claiming that the Obama administration tried to fake Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2016 election, even though multiple investigations (including those led by Republicans) have found that Russia absolutely tried to influence the 2016 election, even if it didn’t have much actual success.
The lawsuit then asks for… $15 billion dollars. How very Dr. Evil. The NY Times, for what it’s worth, is currently valued at less than $10 billion.
A lot of people discussing this lawsuit are claiming two things: that it’s really all about getting a settlement out of the NY Times like he’s been getting out of others, and second that it’s an attempt to get NYT v. Sullivan (the key case that established the actual malice standard) overturned.
While that may be the intent behind this lawsuit, I find both unlikely. Yes, in the lawsuit, Trump lists out a bunch of those corrupt settlements, as if they’re somehow relevant here. But plenty of people have observed that those settlements had nothing to do with the merits of the cases, but rather were entirely about capitulating to a bully and trying to get him off their backs. And, in the case of CBS, it seemed quite clear that the settlement was so that Shari Redstone could get her deal to sell Paramount/CBS to Larry Ellison’s son.
And, when it comes to the NY Times, they have a very good legal team that tends to relish taking on bad faith, bullshit SLAPP style lawsuits. They have a very good track record on those, and don’t often roll over. I would imagine that the legal team feels pretty strongly about defending this case rather than settling.
As for the attack on the actual malice standard, that’s the same thing people claimed about the last Trump lawsuit against the NY Times and it went up in smoke. It’s what people seem to want to claim about a bunch of frivolous defamation claims lately, and while it may be what the lawyers want, they seem like really bad cases to make these arguments. Because the underlying facts are so silly and so obviously bullshit, that the facts make for really bad cases to argue that the NYT v. Sullivan standard is somehow unfair.
Honestly, this just feels like so many of Trump’s lawsuits: engaging in pointless vexatious SLAPP lawfare just to punish media properties that publish negative stories about him. He has long admitted that he enjoys filing such lawsuits. Famously, he once said:
“I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”
That’s the very definition of a SLAPP suit. And, if you’re wondering, Florida does have an anti-SLAPP law, though it’s a bit quirky compared to other states. Also (more importantly) the Eleventh Circuit (which covers Florida) has said that you can’t use anti-SLAPP laws in federal court.
But, really, if you want proof that this is just Trump trying to punish those who dare to report on him accurately, just witness how he responded to a question about how he felt about Pam Bondi’s unconstitutional claims of punishing people for hate speech, by immediately threatening to go after the journalist who asked the question.
JON KARL: What do you make of Pam Bondi saying she's gonna go after hate speech? A lot of your allies say hate speech is free speechTRUMP: We'll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. You have a lot of hate in your hate. Maybe they'll have to go after you.
The New York Times has had a rough few decades when it comes to being manipulated by bad actors. But their latest embarrassment—a complete non-story about NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s college application to Columbia University from 2009—represents a new low in journalistic malpractice that combines hacked materials, racist sources, and a breathtaking willingness to be used as a vehicle for right-wing propaganda. Oh, and all for a story that has zero news value and zero insight into Mamdani’s qualifications to be mayor of New York City.
Here’s what happened: The Times published a story claiming that Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent, checked both “Asian” and “Black or African American” boxes on his Columbia University application all the way back in 2009. The implication, pushed by the story’s framing, was that this was somehow scandalous—a case of gaming the system for affirmative action benefits.
As he runs for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has made his identity as a Muslim immigrant of South Asian descent a key part of his appeal.
But as a high school senior in 2009, Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, claimed another label when he applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times.
Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.
I’m genuinely curious about the Times’ logic here. Person born in Uganda checks “African American” box. Where’s the lie? Did Uganda move? Is it not in Africa anymore? Are we really going to pretend that America’s racial categories, designed primarily for descendants of American slavery, map perfectly onto the global complexity of human identity?
If there is a story, it is solely about the Times’ decision and later justification for publishing this non-story.
Mamdani has a complex racial and ethnic background that doesn’t fit neatly into America’s crude racial categories. As he told the Times: “Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background.” He also noted that he wrote in “Ugandan” in the space provided for additional information.
Oh, and for all the “could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani” reporting in the piece: it didn’t. He didn’t even get into Columbia. Even though his father is a professor there.
So much for gaming the system.
But here’s where it gets really ugly: The Times obtained this information from a massive hack of Columbia’s database, and their source was Jordan Lasker, who goes by the online handle “Cremieux” and whose hobbies include arguing that Black people are genetically inferior. Yes, really. The Times initially described him merely as “an academic who opposes affirmative action,” but as The Guardian previously reported, Lasker regularly argues that Black people are mentally inferior to other races and has written posts defending the idea that African countries have “average national IQs at a level that experts associate with mental impairment.”
But wait, it gets worse. The NY Time’s description of him as “an academic” is generous at best (or perhaps just credulous). His own sister claimed that the family has no evidence he ever graduated and that he didn’t walk at the graduation ceremony that year and his name wasn’t listed in the graduation program. An analysis by another account noted that while he was a PhD student between 2021 and 2024 at Texas Tech, the only academic publication they could find by him turned into a huge scandal that got the professor he co-authored with fired. The paper was not just racist pseudoscience—it also involved lying to the NIH to get access to data. Two-fer!
That article also suggests Lasker (in that paper) lied about his supposed affiliation with the University of Minnesota. When asked about it, the University of Minnesota revealed that Lasker had been a “non-employee” “data consultant” and they had asked him not to claim an academic affiliation:
So, to summarize the Times’ sourcing: They granted anonymity to a person whose identity was already publicly known, who promotes ideas about racial hierarchy that would make a 1930s eugenicist blush, who may have lied about his academic credentials, and whose main claim to fame is getting a professor fired for publishing racist garbage research. And this seemed like a credible source to them for a story attacking a Muslim candidate of color.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Rufo Connection Makes It Even Worse
If this sounds familiar, it should. As Semafor reported, the Times rushed to publish this non-story because they were afraid of being “scooped” by Chris Rufo, the right-wing activist who has openly bragged about manipulating mainstream media to advance his culture war agenda.
The paper believed it had reason to push the story out quickly: It did not want to be scooped by the independent journalist Christopher Rufo. Two people familiar with the reporting process told Semafor that the paper was aware that other journalists were working on the admissions story, including Rufo, a conservative best known for hiscrusade against critical race theory.
Rufo literally announces his manipulation tactics on Twitter. He’s written about how he plans to get outlets like the Times to amplify his disingenuous and misleading campaigns. And yet, the Times still falls for it every single time, then acts surprised when people point out they’re being played.
As Jamison Foser noted months ago about this dynamic, this isn’t really about the Times being “manipulated”—it’s about the Times wanting to publish these stories and using figures like Rufo as an excuse to do what they already wanted to do.
The Times had a choice: they could have ignored this obvious non-story, or they could have served as a willing vehicle for racists and right-wing propagandists to manufacture a fake scandal. They chose the latter. And then they doubled down on it.
But here’s what kills me: they could have written a fascinating story about how a network of racist activists was trying to weaponize hacked university data that revealed nothing particularly interesting to attack a Muslim mayoral candidate. They could have exposed the whole operation. Instead, they decided to become part of it. It’s like if Woodward and Bernstein, upon discovering Watergate, had decided to focus their expose on how the security at the Watergate Hotel was top notch, with an anonymous quote from G. Gordon Liddy.
The Double Standard Is Glaring
The Times’ decision becomes even more indefensible when you consider their recent editorial choices. They refused to publish hacked materials about JD Vance during the 2024 election and declined to explain why. But when a racist hands them a hacked college application from 2009 that reveals nothing of public interest, suddenly those ethical concerns disappear.
The paper also famously decided not to endorse candidates in local elections—except when it came to Mamdani, whom they specifically urged voters not to rank at all on their ballots. Interestingly, they didn’t issue similar “please don’t vote for this person” guidance about Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who resigned over sexual harassment allegations and has been plagued with scandals from his mismanagement during the pandemic. Apparently checking the objectively accurate box on a college application is more disqualifying than a pattern of sexual misconduct and mismanagement.
Manufacturing Controversy To Justify Bad Journalism
Perhaps most galling is the Times’ response to criticism. When readers and media critics pointed out how absurd this story was, an anonymous Times source told Semafor that the controversy proved they were right to publish this:
“The fact that this story engendered all the conversation and debate that it has feels like all the evidence you need that this was a legit line of reporting,” one senior reporter told Semafor.
But that’s not how any of this works. At all. Sometimes the “conversation and debate” is about how you should have known better.
Times editor Patrick Healy also doubled down, claiming—in a lengthy rambling thread on ExTwitter—that Mamdani responding honestly to their questions about this made it into a story.
The Times then published a follow-up piece asking readers about frustrations with racial categories on forms—a transparent attempt to retroactively justify their original story by suggesting there’s some broader conversation about racial identity that needed to be had.
But there was already a conversation about racial identity. It’s been going on for centuries. The Times didn’t need to platform a racist and manufacture a fake scandal to contribute to it.
The Real Story They Missed
As Margaret Sullivan, the Times’ former public editor, noted in The Guardian, this story tells us nothing about Mamdani’s qualifications or policy positions. It’s the journalistic equivalent of spending your time investigating whether someone returned their elementary school library books on time instead of, you know, whether they’d be competent at running a city.
Traditional journalism ethics suggests that when news organizations base a story on hacked or stolen information, there should be an extra high bar of newsworthiness to justify publication. Much of Big Journalism, for example, turned their noses up at insider documents offered to them about JD Vance during last year’s presidential campaign, in part because the source was Iranian hackers; in some cases, they wrote about the hack but not the documents.
The Mamdani story, however, fell far short of the newsworthiness bar.
The real story here is how easily America’s supposed “paper of record” can be manipulated by bad actors who openly announce their manipulation tactics. It’s about how the Times’ apparent opposition to certain candidates leads them to abandon basic journalistic standards. And it’s about how the paper’s desperate desire to appear “balanced” makes them perfect marks for right-wing propagandists who understand exactly which buttons to push.
As Hell Gate put it: “The failing, bumbling New York Times” has become a vehicle for race science and manufactured outrage, all while pretending they’re just doing journalism.
So who does this put the Times in league with? Much likeits coverage of trans youth, it’s helpful to look around and see who else is pushing the same line of coverage. It’s hard-right ideology laundered as legitimate journalistic inquiry. The article’s print edition on Sunday ran under the title “Mamdani Faces Scrutiny Over College Application.” From who? For what? The Times clearly doesn’t feel all that interested in answering these questions, other than its providing cover for fascistic ideologues. The Times is coordinating with people whose work is actively eroding what’s left of America’s attempts at racial equity.
Again, it’s hard to tsk-tsk a newspaper that said it wasn’t endorsing candidates in local elections anymore, andthen revised that to actually be like, “unless you’re thinking of electing a socialist, which in that case do not do that and instead vote for this sexual harasser.” Having failed spectacularly at stopping Mamdani, the Times is now unveiling its tried-and-true strategy to drum up controversy—and question the legitimacy of a person’s humanity—by doing the dirtiest of work for the worst-faith actors.
The Times owes its readers an explanation for why they thought this was a story worth telling. Why they granted anonymity to a person who promotes racial pseudoscience. Why they rushed to publish obvious non-news to avoid being “scooped” by a known manipulator. And why they continue to provide aid and comfort to people whose stated goal is to manipulate them.
But the paper has shown no inclination toward introspection. Instead, they’ve doubled down, claiming that the controversy they manufactured proves they were right to manufacture it.
In the meantime, the rest of us can learn something from this debacle: when someone tells you who they are, believe them. Chris Rufo has told us he manipulates mainstream media. Jordan Lasker has told us he believes in debunked racist pseudoscience about “racial hierarchy.” And the New York Times has told us that they’re willing to amplify both of them if it serves their editorial agenda.
While the Justin Baldoni legal fight with Blake Lively is still going on, one half of the dispute has been thrown in the dumpster… for now. If you’re not up on the case, here is the TL;DR version. Baldoni and Lively costarred in the movie It Ends With Us. Lively filed a claim of workplace harassment for inappropriate behavior on set by Baldoni, leading to an explosive public feud between the two. Eventually, Lively sued Baldoni over the claims, with Baldoni countersuing her and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, for defamation and other claims. He also sued the New York Times for its reporting on the dispute. Baldoni’s legal team engaged in some fairly silly behavior on top of all of that. We said at the time that the suit against the New York Times in particular appeared destined for the aforementioned dumpster when the judge paused discovery to consider the Times’ motion to dismiss.
Well, it seems I was more correct there than I had intended to be. The judge has not only dismissed the suit against the New York Times, but Baldoni’s suit against Lively and Reynolds as well. As to his claims of defamation and that Lively stole the movie out from under him and his company, the judge had this to say.
Baldoni’s lawsuit centred on two claims: that Lively “stole the film” from him and his company Wayfarer by threatening not to promote it, and that she and others promoted a false narrative that Baldoni sexually assaulted her and launched a smear campaign against her, Judge Liman explained in his opinion.
But Baldoni and his production company “have not adequately alleged that Lively’s threats were wrongful extortion rather than legally permissible hard bargaining or renegotiation of working conditions”, he wrote.
Additionally, the judge wrote, Baldoni and his company had not proved defamation because the “Wayfarer Parties have not alleged that Lively is responsible for any statements other than the statements” in her lawsuit, which are privileged.
Defamation is notoriously hard to prove in court in America — for good reason. Of course, it gets all the more difficult when you can’t be bothered to make such a claim about specific statements other than those in the actual lawsuit itself. The lack of valid claims against Reynolds and others likewise resulted those suits being dismissed as well.
And, really, attempting to sue over the time-honored Hollywood tradition of wrestling for creative control over a movie is more than a bit laughable.
As for the New York Times, the court essentially told Baldoni that he can’t sue the media just because he doesn’t like their good faith reporting.
The judge also determined that evidence did not show that the New York Times “acted with actual malice” in publishing their story, dismissing that $250m suit as well.
“The alleged facts indicate that the Times reviewed the available evidence and reported, perhaps in a dramatized manner, what it believed to have happened,” he wrote. “The Times had no obvious motive to favor Lively’s version of events.”
Now, you can read the entire judgment below for yourself, if you choose. It is quite long and, frankly, filled with content in the early pages that is not particularly flattering to Lively and Reynolds. That’s only important insofar as the court appears to have looked at the facts in a clear-eyed manner before pivoting to what the actual law says about the various claims Baldoni made, which ended up lacking merit.
Now, while the court did give Baldoni leave to refile some of his claims, but only those that revolve around contract interference. And here’s where I’d like to remind you that we started covering this whole celebrity fiasco as a Streisand Effect story. Baldoni could have attempted to manage what is admittedly a difficult situation for him, self-made or otherwise, in a quiet and respectful matter. Instead, he went legal and very, very public with this whole dispute and, as a result, the dismissal of his claims is equally public.
It’s not a good look. At this point, hard as it may be, the best course would probably be to not file some amended suit or appeal the decision. Given how Baldoni’s side has behaved thus far, however, I doubt they’ll take that course.
We talked about the celebrity fight du jour between actors Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively when it started, as it seemed for all the world like your typical Streisand Effect story. What began as a workplace harassment complaint of sorts, with Lively initially alleging several instances of inappropriate workplace behavior by Baldoni, has now exploded into a Hollywood court case with competing lawsuits from both parties. While I tend to shy away from the idea of parties purposefully employing the Streisand Effect for wanted attention, as opposed to inadvertently generating unwanted visibility, that sure looks like this is a case of the former. Baldoni and his legal team have taken every step possible to make every bit of this as public as possible, while Lively has done the opposite.
Now, I want to make clear that I don’t really have much of a take as to the merits of the case on either side. I just don’t know enough to have an opinion on the legal drama itself. That is what trials are for, after all.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some silliness to talk about as an update here. And when it comes to the status of the trial and what’s happening within it, there are several things going on.
First, like the New York Times before him, Ryan Reynolds has been attempting to exit this whole thing. Lively’s husband was sued alongside his wife for defamation and for interfering in Baldoni’s business relationships. Unfortunately, it appears that Baldoni’s suit may not have met some pretty basic threshholds for making such claims.
“The entirety of Mr. Baldoni’s case appears to be based on Mr. Reynolds allegedly privately calling Mr. Baldoni a ‘predator,’ but here is the problem, that is not defamation unless they can show that Mr. Reynolds did not believe that statement to be true,” Reynolds’ attorneys Mike Gottlieb and Esra Hudson told Us in a statement. “The complaint doesn’t allege that, and just the opposite, the allegations in the complaint suggest that Mr. Reynolds genuinely believes Mr. Baldoni is a predator.”
The statement continued: “Mr. Reynolds’ wife has accused Mr. Baldoni — privately and in multiple complaints — of sexual harassment and retaliation, and as pointed out by Mr. Reynolds’ motion, Mr. Baldoni has also openly spoken about his past of mistreating women and pushing the boundaries of consent. Mr. Reynolds has a First Amendment right to express his opinion of Mr. Baldoni, which should be comforting to a group of people who have repeatedly called Ms. Lively and Mr. Reynolds ‘bullies’ and other names over the past year.”
This is the “actual malice” requirement for defamation at work. Baldoni’s lawyers would need to prove not that Reynolds made the statements they claim he made about Baldoni, but rather that he made them knowing they were false in order to prove defamation. And that is notoriously difficult to prove. Save any smoking gun evidence of Reynolds openly admitting he was spreading lies, it’s very unlikely the defamation claims are going anywhere.
“Earlier today we moved for sanctions against the lawyers and parties responsible for the utterly frivolous claims brought against Ryan Reynolds,” Reynolds’ legal team said in a statement to Us Weekly on Tuesday, May 20. “Justin Baldoni’s lawyer and his clients filed a preposterous lawsuit falsely claiming that Ryan Reynolds extorted people he had never met, that he allegedly interfered with business relationships that do not exist, and somehow defamed people he never said a word about based on unspecified statements that do not appear anywhere in their 391-paragraph complaint. These are not serious claims—they are a desperate ploy for clickbait headlines that have no place in federal court.”
“Mr. Reynolds provided the Rule 11 Plaintiffs and their counsel an opportunity to save face, explaining these claims’ glaring and fundamental defects and urging that they be withdrawn more than 21 days ago,” the docs read. “Unfortunately, the Rule 11 Plaintiffs and their counsel unequivocally refused to do so, offering no response on these defects except to argue that these issues are appropriately resolved by motion to dismiss and may later be supported by discovery. But these claims’ fundamental failings are not about the parties’ dispute as to the legal arguments relating to their claims, or the facts, or even that all of their claims are weak and meritless (which, they are).”
If Baldoni’s real aim in all of this was to make all of this as public and publicity-driven as possible, well, it all kind of tracks from there.
And that’s further backed up by some truly absurd claims that Baldoni’s legal team have made about how to conduct Lively’s deposition. One lawyer said, I suppose perhaps in jest, that Lively’s deposition should be an event the public can attend or see for a fee.
“Since Ms. Lively is open to testifying, let’s make it count,” Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman tells PEOPLE. “Hold the deposition at MSG, sell tickets or stream it, and donate every dollar to organizations helping victims of domestic abuse.”
Here again we see the legal team from one side behaving in a serious way, while the other is not. Whatever the truth of their competing claims against the other, it is certainly not a good look for one side coming off as professional and the other, well, not.
And, frankly, recent news about how Baldoni is stressed over the public legal drama seems quite odd coming from the person who made this very, very public in a way it hadn’t been previously. As entertaining as this all might be, there must certainly be a better way this all could have been handled than whatever this fiasco has turned into.
As we’ve been following along to some degree with the whole Blake Lively versus Justin Baldoni legal mess, the more recent stories have been about Baldoni’s attempt to go after protected creative speech in a Deadpool movie, the choice of waging a PR war before the trial even starts, and the Streisand Effect nature to his actions. While the salacious accusations from each side towards the other aren’t really something we cover here at Techdirt, the online shenanigans and speech implications absolutely are.
Which is why I am going to remind you that the first lawsuit Baldoni filed wasn’t against Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Marvel, or Disney. It was against the New York Times, which Baldoni’s suit argued was liable for defamation and fraud because the news organization reported on the news.
We said at the time that the suit against the paper would almost certainly not get very far. And now we have our first inclination that it might get dismissed in fairly short order, given the judge has put a pause on the discovery phase of the trial pending the Times’ motion to dismiss.
In an order issued Tuesday and obtained by USA TODAY Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Liman approved the Times’ motion for a stay of discovery — evidence-gathering among the case’s parties — pending his review of the company’s motion to be dismissed as a defendant in the case.
“The NY Times’s motion presents ‘substantial grounds for dismissal’ and the NY Times has made a strong showing that its motion to dismiss is likely to succeed on the merits,” Liman wrote.
The court might has well have put its intentions in big shining lights. This is a suit that never should have been filed and the idea that Baldoni’s team can go on a fishing expedition, potentially to find more personal communications to display to or leak to the public, is silly. The Times has robust First Amendment protections on its reporting. The bar for fraud and defamation is quite high.
In other words, Baldoni’s team probably would be better off cutting its losses and dropping the suit itself.
In its dismissal motion last week, the Times said it merely engaged in newsgathering with its publication of the viral article, adding that plaintiffs did not show the outlet acted with malice. The newspaper also said the sole alleged defamatory statement in the article — that the plaintiffs orchestrated a “smear campaign” in retaliation for Lively complaining about sexual harassment — was protected opinion.
“We appreciate the court’s decision today, which recognizes the important First Amendment values at stake,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in a statement to Reuters. “The court has stopped Mr. Baldoni from burdening The Times with discovery requests in a case that should never have been brought.”
At this point, the suit against the New York Times is probably most useful as a betting mechanism, in which we set an over/under on the date that the court will dismiss the case. Anything else would come as a complete surprise to this writer.
There have been very few times I’ve encountered something in life that feels like it was absolutely made specifically for me. The Deadpool movie series is one of those few things. For my sensibilities, they’re just about perfect. And one of my favorite aspects of the films is the fourth-wall-breaking nature of the main character. Deadpool will often look into the camera and talk to the audience in a way that acknowledges that he’s in a movie. Examples of this are legion: Deadpool referring to the X-Men house smelling like Patrick Stewart, complaints in movie about licensing restrictions preventing cool cameos by other Marvel characters, or the narration in the 2nd film’s opener about how the entire movie was in a fact a “family movie.”
The point here is that cultural references that would normally have no place in a superhero movie abound. Some of those references even revolve around lead actor Ryan Reynold’s personal life. For instance, in Deadpool & Wolverine, a multiverse version of Deadpool that is female, Ladypool, was played by Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively. Lively recently sued a director and co-star of a film she was in, Justin Baldoni, and while Baldoni had threatened to sue her back, instead he… sued the NY Times for reporting on Lively’s accusations. Lively sued over accusations of some very gross workplace behavior, among other things, whereas Baldoni is arguing, um, that the NY Times reporting on Lively’s accusations is defamation and… fraud?
Those accusations included, for instance, Baldoni attempting to pressure Lively over her physique in the movie shortly after she had a child, sharing inappropriate content with castmembers, and talking openly about sexual topics. Baldoni, meanwhile, has been quite famous for portraying himself as a really nice guy and talking openly about how he’s a “feminist.”
What does any of this have to do with Deadpool? Well, another multiverse character that shows up is Nicepool, an unmasked, long-haired version of the titular character. And fans noticed some similarities to the details surrounding the accusations Lively has made against Baldoni.
The particular moments in Deadpool & Wolverine that echo Lively’s claims against Baldoni include Nicepool’s lines about Ladypool “snapping back” into shape after having a baby and following that up with “It’s okay, I identify as a feminist”—since Baldoni touts his status as a feminist in his podcast. A deleted scene in Deadpool & Wolverine also saw Nicepool making reference to a feminist podcast; that latter scene in particular helped the “Baldoni is Nicepool?” theory go viral.
And viral it went, indeed. Major entertainment media sources even picked this up and ran with it.
I will make no claims as to the veracity of Lively’s claims for the purposes of this post. I will say that every action Baldoni has taken since appears to be designed to keep those claims in the headlines for as long and as loud as possible. And the fact that, despite suggesting he would sue Lively directly, he hasn’t… seems telling. Also, suing the New York Times for reporting on all of this? That is a very silly gambit unlikely to end in any kind of victory for Baldoni and most certainly Streisanding the attention on the accusations against him through the proverbial roof.
But Baldoni wasn’t done there. Once the speculation about Nicepool started, he fired off a litigation hold to Disney and Marvel, once again propelling all of this back into the news.
According to Variety, Baldoni’s lawyers are using the accusation as grounds for issuing a litigation hold letter which calls on Disney and Marvel Studios to retain “documents and data” in regards to Baldoni and “Nicepool.”
The litigation letter presented by Baldoni’s team asks Marvel and Disney to preserve “any and all documents relating to the development of the ‘Nicepool’ character” in addition to “communications relating to the development, writing, and filming of storylines and scenes featuring ‘Nicepool’” and “all documents relating to or reflecting a deliberate attempt to mock, harass, ridicule, intimidate, or bully Baldoni through the character of ‘Nicepool.’”
It’s hard to see the strategy here. I suppose that perhaps there might be some utility in building towards a defamation and/or harassment case using whatever can be dug up from Disney and Marvel. But, frankly, I doubt it will be much. And the content that appears in the movie is very much going to be protected speech on First Amendment grounds, given its parody nature and the extremely veiled references it makes (if it’s even making those references at all).
Using myself as a convenient test case, I had zero idea who Baldoni was until I caught wind of this whole mess with Lively, his suit against the New York Times, and most recently this legal notice sent to Disney and Marvel. Now I don’t know that I could forget his name, his image, nor the accusations leveled against him even if I tried.
So if the impetus for all this action by Baldoni was over anger at the public nature of these accusations, well, it seems he is working against that purpose at the moment.
Donald Trump’s history of frivolous lawsuits against media outlets shows his disdain for free speech, and he shows no signs of stopping. The Columbia Journalism Review has an article exploring a bunch of other legal threats Trump and those around him have been flinging at news and book publishers over their speech.
These threats are part of a disturbing pattern of Trump trying to silence and intimidate his critics:
The letter, addressed to lawyers at the New York Times and Penguin Random House, arrived a week before the election. Attached was a discursive ten-page legal threat from an attorney for Donald Trump that demanded $10 billion in damages over “false and defamatory statements” contained in articles by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner.
It singles out two stories coauthored by Buettner and Craig that related to their book on Trump and his financial dealings, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, released on September 17. It also highlighted an October 20 story headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” by Baker and an October 22 piece by Schmidt, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”
“There was a time, long ago, when the New York Times was considered the ‘newspaper of record,’” the letter, a copy of which was reviewed by CJR, reads. “Those halcyon days have passed.” It accuses the Times of being “a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democratic Party” that employs “industrial-scale libel against political opponents.”
Even when these lawsuits are eventually dismissed, the process is the punishment. The punishment is the process. News organizations are forced to divert time and money defending against frivolous claims, while journalists may think twice about pursuing tough stories out of fear of ending up in court. It’s an insidious form of soft censorship that undermines the media’s vital watchdog role.
This is especially galling given how frequently I saw people say that in the election they supported Donald Trump because “he stood for free speech” while simultaneously claiming that Kamala Harris “wanted censorship.” This was a key line that JD Vance used, without ever backing it up, because it wasn’t ever true.
Harris hasn’t sued the media for critical reporting. Trump has, over and over and over again and continues to threaten more such lawsuits.
Free speech actually means something, and the idea that Trump supports it is laughable. But, of course, his fans won’t care because they don’t actually care about free speech. That was just a convenient excuse. They’re happy to support speech suppression lawfare when they see it aimed at their perceived “enemies” in the media.
And all of this is why we need a federal anti-SLAPP law, but it seems quite unlikely Donald Trump will sign one while he’s the President.
Like so many of Elon Musk’s accomplishments, the importance of his Starlink low-Earth orbit efforts is quite often overstated.
While a great option for those in remote locations who can actually afford the steep price tag (affordability often tops access as the top barrier to broadband adoption), the network has struggled with speed issues due to satellite physics and network congestion.
So while Starlink is useful, there are a few innovation asterisks that often don’t get mentioned in gushing coverage, as is often the case for so much of what Elon Musk’s companies are engaged in.
Often Starlink is portrayed as something akin to magic, such was the case in this New York Times article that claimed that life among Amazon tribes has been utterly and completely transformed by the arrival of the tech. The Times goes on at length to insist these territories are only just now coming violently face to face with all the challenges posed by social media and porn thanks to Starlink:
“After only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography.
Modern society has dealt with these issues over decades as the internet continued its relentless march. The Marubo and other Indigenous tribes, who have resisted modernity for generations, are now confronting the internet’s potential and peril all at once, while debating what it will mean for their identity and culture.”
But as 404 Media’s Jason Koebler deftly notes in detail, most of these challenges aren’t new to these tribes, broadband access has been in many of these territories for a while, and Starlink isn’t some utterly transformative magic bauble falling from the sky:
“What the Times did not stress and should have stressed is that what the Marubo people are experiencing now is a difference of degree and scale, not of kind. They are also not wholly new problems to the tribe. What I have learned over the years is that there are very few parts of the world that are not touched by technology, and that many Amazonian tribes, in particular, have made the choice to intentionally interact with non-Indigenous society (or have felt, at times, that they have to interact with the non-Indigenous world and technology) in order to represent and advocate for themselves in political systems that seek to seize or exploit their land or otherwise marginalize them. They also use these technologies for the same reasons everyone else does, have for years, and have been grappling with what it might mean for their culture all this time.”
But our highly aggregated (and now increasingly badly “AI” automated) engagement chasing modern news environment quickly glommed onto the porn reference, resulting in an endless flood of clickbait stating some variation of the claim of “Amazon Tribes now addicted to porn thanks to Starlink.” It all got so noisy, the Times was forced to write a follow up article clarifying things:
“These claims are unfounded, untrue and reflect a prejudiced ideological current that disrespects our autonomy and identity,” Enoque Marubo, the Marubo leader who brought Starlink to his tribe’s villages, said in a video posted online Sunday night.”
While the NYT does over-state Starlink’s importance without noting any of its caveats (which again is very common when it comes to Musk and usually works in his favor), the bigger problem was caused by an aggregated automated engagement press that misrepresented the original reporting. Of course Musk himself didn’t quite get that, and directed all of his ire exclusively at the New York Times.
It’s part of a broader cycle where Musk — a guy’s whose entirely super-genius engineer mythology was propped up by sloppy access journalism for decades — pretends that major outlets like the NYT are somehow just out to get him. Ignorant of the fact that Musk’s entire mythos wouldn’t exist if this same engagement-chasing press didn’t routinely over-state the man’s achievements and importance and completely ignore numerous problematic caveats.
Correction & Retraction: The original BBC article implied that the NY Times was threatening Worldle and demanding it change its name. That now appears to be incorrect, and it simply opposed letting Worldle register its own trademark, noting that it was too close to its own Wordle. Which… is not a crazy interpretation. While the NY Times has, in the past, been too aggressive on some things, in retrospect, what it did here appears appropriate, given the circumstances.
Indeed, one wonders why Worldle sought a trademark at all in these circumstasnces.
At Techdirt we normally try not to report on things without looking at (and posting) the underlying documents, and in this case we failed to do that. We deeply regret the error and will seek to be more careful going forward.
Whenever we talk about Wordle, the simple Mastermind-like vocabulary game, it’s important to remember that it wasn’t always owned and operated by the New York Times. Before the Times, the game was operated by its creator, Josh Wardle, who flatly insisted that the game not be monetized nor protected or enforced over any kind of intellectual property rights. But after the Times bought the rights to the game, all of that changed. The paper began going after all kinds of Wordle spinoffs over IP concerns, including the Wordle Archive and alternative language versions of the games for those who wanted to play it, but not in English.
And now we learn that the NY Times is still at it, with news that the paper is also going after Worldle, a spinoff of Wordle that has nothing to do with words or vocabulary, but where you instead have to guess a location based on Google Streetview images.
The New York Times is fighting to take down a game called Worldle, according to a legal filing viewed by the BBC, in which The Times apparently argued that the geography-based game is “creating confusion” by using a name that’s way too similar to Wordle.
Worldle is “nearly identical in appearance, sound, meaning, and imparts the same commercial impression” to Wordle, The Times claimed.
What’s impressive about all of this is the speed and determination by which the Times has chosen to act as the antithesis to Wardle’s handling of the game and situations like this. The company applied to trademark Wordle the day after it closed on the purchase of the rights to the game, something Wardle never pursued. And then the threats and takedowns began. It’s as though Robin Hood handed his bow and arrow to another person only to have that person declare that it was time to rob from the poor to give to the rich.
Not to mention that it’s not like the NY Times, for all of its aggressive enforcement activity, has been fulsome in doing so. There are still a zillion Wordle clones and otherwise inspired games out there that use similar names that are living without threat, as of yet. And while the Times claims that Worldle’s existence is confusing the public and taking away from its own game, the similarity in their names actually seems to be working for the Times, rather than against it.
Today, millions visit the Times site daily to play Wordle, but the Times is seemingly concerned that some gamers might be diverted to play Worldle instead, somehow mistaking the daily geography puzzle—where players have six chances to find a Google Street View location on a map—with the popular word game.
This fear seems somewhat overstated, since a Google search for “Worldle” includes Wordle in the top two results and suggests that searchers might be looking for Wordle, but a search for Wordle does not bring up Worldle in the top results.
The NY Times doesn’t have to do any of this. It didn’t even have to trademark the name of its purchased game at all, actually. Wardle had no problem attracting players to his game even after the so-called clones came to be. In fact, the public did a wonderful job of policing that sort of things itself, all without the help of any intellectual property or lawyers. But the moment it became a corporate property, all of that changed.
The creator of Worldle is vowing to fight this attempted takedown, but he also seems resigned to the idea that he might have to change the name of the game.
McDonald told the BBC that he was disappointed in the Times targeting Worldle. He runs the game all by himself, attracting approximately 100,000 players monthly, and said that “most of the money he makes from the game goes to Google because he uses Google Street View images, which players have to try to identify.” The game can only be played through a web browser and is supported by ads and annual subscriptions that cost less than $12.
“I’m just a one-man operation here, so I was kinda surprised,” McDonald told the BBC, while vowing to defend his game against the Times’ attempt to take it down. “There’s a whole industry of [dot]LE games,” McDonald told the BBC. “Wordle is about words, Worldle is about the world, Flaggle is about flags…Worst-case scenario, we’ll change the name, but I think we’ll be OK.”
While true, that would be entirely too bad. There’s no reason any of that has to happen. Millions still play Wordle these days, and the six-figure user count playing Worldle is obviously not some kind of threat to the NY Times’ property.
But because the NY Times couldn’t be bothered to act human and awesome, even just this once, or even honor the wishes of the actual creator of the game, well, here we are.
Remember Nick Sandmann? He was the dude who became something of a Rorschach Test for how much your political beliefs (in any direction) influence your views of a short video, when EVERYONE HAD OPINIONS on his MAGA-hat wearing encounter with a Native American demonstrator, Nathan Phillips. Also, everyone magically became experts in reading body language and facial expressions.
Anyway, it turned out that the short video left out much of the context of the encounter, and many of those opinions looked a bit silly within days (again, in any political direction). But, for some reason, Sandmann was convinced that he could sue anyone who offered an eventually-determined-to-be-silly opinion for defamation, partly because of the advice of his terrible, terrible lawyers Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry.
He sued a bunch of news orgs, and none of the cases showed anything that could even remotely be seen as defamatory. After some back and forth, much of the case zeroed in on one major thing. Phillips had spoken to the media about his impressions of the encounter, which were clearly his opinion from his vantage point. But Sandmann insisted that because there were some minor factual errors in that description, it could be deemed as defamatory. But, that’s not how it works.
Eventually, CNN decided to settle, leading to wild speculation that CNN must have paid him hundreds of millions of dollars. This was based solely on the ridiculous amounts he had asked for in the lawsuits themselves. However, most people recognized the nature of the settlement, given where the case was meant that it was almost certainly a “nuisance fee,” to make the case go away. That is, less than it would have cost to have continued to fight the case and get it dismissed.
This was more or less confirmed when Sandmann’s not-good-actually-terrible lawyer Lin Wood lost his shit when a CNN on-air contributor randomly speculated on Twitter that she’d “guess” Sandmann got $25k, and Wood claimed that was a breach of CNN’s confidentiality agreement. So, one, that confirmed rather than the many, many millions MAGA folks were insisting Sandmann got, Wood effectively confirmed it was $25k. If it was a wrong number, Wood likely wouldn’t have been claiming it violated an agreement. But, also, the fact that it was just a guess (apparently a good one) meant that, even if right, it wouldn’t violate the agreement.
The Washington Post and NBC also eventually (stupidly) decided it was worth nuisance fees and settled. They shouldn’t have. Beyond marking themselves as easy marks in defamation lawsuits (leading to a bunch of MAGA lawsuits directed at CNN), it allowed this ridiculous story to live on.
Of course, what happened then was that a judge rightly dismissed all the other lawsuits against all the other media defendants (which had all been consolidated into a single case). There was no defamation at all. The companies that paid nuisance fees to settle could have paid a bit more and actually won their cases.
Sandmann appealed. Last year, the 6th Circuit easily upheld the lower court ruling. Again, opinion ain’t defamation. This is defamation 101 stuff:
Phillips’s statements are opinion, not fact. In making this finding, we are not engaging in speculation or reading improper inferences into Phillips’s statements, as the dissent suggests. Rather, we are engaging in the task required of us: a legal interpretation of Phillips’s statements in their context within the News Organizations’ articles. The statements’ opinion-versus-fact status is “not a question for the jury.” Cromity, 494 S.W.3d at 504.
Because the statements are opinion, they are protected by both the Constitution and Kentucky law, and they are nonactionable. The district court did not err in so concluding.
Sandmann requested the Supreme Court hear his appeal. He argued that “conveying observed sensory impressions in factual, descriptive terms” should not be considered opinion, but could be deemed as factual. Basically, if you are describing how you viewed a scenario (i.e., your opinion of it), but use “factual” language, then (according to the petition), it should be possible to call it defamatory.
This reminds me of a lesson a smart 1st Amendment lawyer told me years back. Saying “in my opinion” and then stating a fact doesn’t make it an opinion, nor does saying “as a matter of fact” and then stating an opinion make what you said factual. How you frame it doesn’t matter for defamation. It just matters whether or not you made a false statement of fact that defamed someone. Giving your opinion of a situation is not that.
Last week, the Supreme Court denied cert (without comment). Sandmann’s lawyer (Sandmann fired Lin Wood midway through all this but kept on Todd McMurtry) is claiming this is a travesty of justice, which is just as laughable as his legal arguments in the case:
Sandmann attorney Todd McMurtry told Law&Crime that the denial left him profoundly disappointed.
“In response to the Supreme Court’s recent decision not to hear the defamation case of Nick Sandmann, I can only express profound disappointment. This outcome denies Nick justice and misses an opportunity to set important precedents for protecting individual rights against defamation by mainstream media,” he said. “The Supreme Court’s refusal to address the critical issues presented by our case illustrates the growing challenges individuals face in the public sphere. Such challenges include unchecked defamation, significantly threatening individuals’ reputational integrity and personal dignity. It touches upon the very essence of our democratic values and the right of every American to seek redress when those values are compromised.”
The lawyer added that he’s writing a book called “Dismissed” which will explore “challenges faced by individuals in seeking justice against powerful media entities,” as in Sandmann’s case. He maintains there are “systemic issues” that make defamation actions like these subject to “marginalization.”
“As we reflect on the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision, let us keep sight of the broader conversation about justice, accountability, and the protection of individual rights,” McMurtry concluded. “We must continue this conversation with urgency and commitment for Nick and all Americans who deserve a legal system that serves justice equitably.”
Get off your high horse, McMurtry. You filed a series of shitty SLAPP suits over non-defamatory speech. You were lucky to get out of it with a few nuisance-fee settlement deals. If you actually had a legitimate case it wouldn’t have been rejected at all three levels. The subtitle of your book should be “how I wasted everyone’s time and money just to get dismissed.”
The only “systemic” issue is the one going the other way: the one that enables people to file sketchy SLAPP suits over nothing, and waste years of everyone’s time.
This is why we continue to need a strong federal anti-SLAPP law and strong anti-SLAPP laws in every state, to get these kinds of suits dismissed much faster, and with legal fees on the line.
