NAG Case Management Conference: A Complete Review of Active Cases We're Following

Post settlement of the Lively case, it's time to go through all of the cases on our docket and discuss whats happening in each one. We've got employment cases, speech cases, sports cases, and cases we just love because they involve messy famous people. If your brain needs a kick start after being down the Lively rabbit hole, or you need to choose something else to obsess over, this episode is for you! Plus, some bonus thoughts on being GenX just after my 51st birthday. 

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Transcript

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The information and ideas expressed in the allegedly golden podcast are legal explanation and legal analysis, not legal advice. While I am a lawyer, I am not your lawyer. If you need legal advice, please contact a licensed legal professional in your area. My opinions are my own. For better or for worse. Welcome again to Allegedly Golden. Um, I am here, as usual, with a snoring Frank. And my little drink. I will admit this week it is ginger ale. I will have some Diet Coke later. Um, but I'm trying to be good and I'm trying to get rid of the last vestiges of this, whatever this garbage is that has taken root in my sinuses. Um, so it's ginger ale. Uh, Mr. Nag is like a ginger aleholic. Um, he drinks ginger ale every single night. I don't know why. He just as an adult was like one day, like, oh my god, ginger ale is so good. Why haven't I been drinking this forever? And now he like drinks it forever. Okay. Um, so I am drinking the ginger ale. It is good. So last week uh I recorded an episode and it disappeared, which I think it was like a sign. Um my my throat stuff, my cold was at its worst, then I was kind of choking through it, like stopping every three seconds to cough. So I think it's better that we skipped a week. And thank you for returning even after I missed a week. I was so proud of myself and my record. I went like 21 weeks in a row. Um, but anyway, we are back on track. I want to start by talking about something that was really on my mind last week, but still on my mind, which is all the thoughts around like turning 51. I turn 51 at the end of May. And 51 obviously is not a very big deal. Like 50 was a really big deal. Um, but the more I like get into this phase of my life, this like true, I don't know, whatever we're calling it now, middle-age, I don't know, 50s for sure. The more I'm thinking about like the trajectory of my life as a whole, like how it started, how it's been, and where it's going. And a lot of that I think is very Gen X specific because I am Generation X and we have this very strange and unique experience. Um, people call us a bridge generation, and I think that's absolutely true. We really are the bridge between the old and the new. There's the boomers and the silent generation, and then there's the people after us, right? The some some of the millennials, depending on their age, the the um Gen Y, the alpha, the Gen Z, all that stuff. But I just kind of want to share some of the things that I'm experiencing, and you guys can tell me if you relate to it. Um, when I talk to my friends who are the same age and going through the same things, these are the things that we are all kind of like, yeah, that's how it feels. The first is that our lives started off very rigid. Right? There were very defined rules for things. This is how you do this, and this is how you do this. This is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong. These are the paths that are available to you, right? And over the course of our lives, that has eroded slowly. As things have become more open, as people have become more open-minded, as the world has changed and evolved and information has become more available. It's just slowly eroded over time. So when I look back at like where my life started and the rigidity of that, and then I look where I am now, where I am now feels more voluntary than my life ever has, if that makes sense. It feels like I'm doing the things I'm doing on purpose, or because I want to, or because I choose to, more than I ever have in my life before. And I like it. I do think that while young people nowadays, and young people I consider anybody younger than me, um, but certainly people who are in their teens and twenties now, um, I so admire their um knowledge and understanding and commitment to really knowing themselves, right? To understanding who they are and what motivates them and how they learn and how they relate and how they navigate. Like that is so admirable. And I just love that the world is moving in a direction like that. And I love that there are whole generations of people who, from the moment they are able to conceptualize it, will start figuring out who they are. And they won't have to like deconstruct their trauma or their childhood or whatever the fuck, because they will have constructed it from the beginning. But I think my generation is we were like the tip of the spear in terms of being curious about who we were to begin with. My parents do not give one flying fuck about their learning style or whether they have ADHD or how they relate to others or what their trauma responses are. They don't care. I'm sure there's exceptions to that rule. And within Gen X, some people care more than others. I think if you're the kind of person who doesn't care about that, you're probably not listening to this podcast. But I do think we get credit as Generation X for being the ones to kind of like open that door ever so slightly. There were some people who were real heroes in my generation who are like, you know, maybe we ought to think about this stuff, and then maybe we ought to talk about it. Um and so we are all like, in my generation, we are figuring out at this stage of our lives, why am I this way? What is this a response to? How do I learn? How do I grow? How do I relate to all that kind of shit? The hard part is that we are learning about all of that at a time in our lives when we have made most of the large decisions that we are going to make. Like, what career path am I going to be on? Am I going to have kids? Who is my partner going to be? And for some people, they are able to, after becoming knowledgeable about themselves, change things in their life that do not work. They can't really change whether you had kids or not, right? But you can change your career, you can change your partner, you can change your location, right? So as Generation X is like discovering all these things, some people are able to make changes. And then there are those of us who are like, I'm not unhappy with the decisions that I've made, but I am learning about myself more while I'm already living in choices I made a long time ago. And so we are buffering all the time. Maybe that's why we're so tired. I don't know. Maybe that's why all the coffee. I feel like I'm just constantly buffering. Like I am that circle on the computer. Like I am not a tattoo person because I have commitment phobia real bad. But if I were going to get one, I might get like the buffering circle, like a small one somewhere. Because that is what I feel like I am doing all of the time. New information, integrating into old information, trying to figure out buffer, buffer, buffer. Now I do think that we get some credit for being the first to do a couple of things. We were the first generation, we are the first generation, that as soon as we became adults, as soon as Gen X women became adults, we were automatically allowed to have financial control over our own lives. If you don't know, the law finally writ large, it was it was popping up all over the place, but it finally became like the rule everywhere that women were allowed to have their own bank accounts and their own credit cards without a man's signature on them in 1974, which is the year before I was born. So for my mom's generation, for the baby boomers, part of their lives they didn't have that right, and part of their lives they did. But when I turned 18 as a Gen X woman, the first thing I did, well, one of the first things that my dad helped me do was get a bank account and get a credit card. And it was not even a question. Like maybe I knew that women hadn't always been able to do that, but I have had control over my finances my entire adult life. And we're the first generation to have done that. And quite frankly, I think we're doing a pretty fucking good job at it. I think in some circumstances we're doing a better job at it. But like, I'm sure that at the time there were people saying if you let women have control over the money, the whole thing is gonna fall apart. And that didn't happen. But we have had that ability our whole lives. And I think that's part of the reason why Gen X women are so, I don't want to say strong because that's reductive. We know we can handle shit because we've been handling it. Since we could. I definitely think that the gap between what Gen X um kids know and what their parents know or knew about the world is the biggest gap that there's ever been. At least in, you know, modern times that we have information about, right? I mean, you always want the younger generation, always knows a little bit more than their parents, right? That's the idea. The world expands a little bit, we learn new things. You know, I'm sure like in the industrial revolution, that was like a huge change. But what my mother knew, if you if you just pick a year, what my mother knew about the world at age 35 compared to what I knew at 35, humongous oceans of information. And that's partially because of the internet. It's partially because of the availability of travel, it's partially because of integration in schools. It's right, it's just because the world got bigger and more accessible. And I struggle with that sometimes when I talk to my parents. Um, especially when I talk to my mom, I'm like, how do you not know this? This is the stuff that's been like duh to me since I was 25 years old. That gap is huge. Now, of course, there are exceptions to that as well. There are some mothers, there are some baby boomer women who are just like brilliant and amazing. But generally speaking, I think the gap between what our mothers knew and what we know was the first time it's ever been that big. Obviously, one of the things that our generation did first was to really earnestly sort of consider do I want to get married? Do I do I want that? Um, so you could not get married and not like be an old maid. Now I know there's still haters out there, but several of my very close friends who are my age are not married and they live incredible lives. And there's no shame associated with it. You know who asks about when are they gonna get married? The boomers. Because that still matters to them. But I think for Gen X, we started to be like, does it matter really? And those of us who are married, especially those of us in heterosexual relationships, are like, you know, if this one doesn't work, I don't know if I'm gonna do this again. I don't think we need marriage as women as much as we did. We're the first generation to be like, I don't know if we really need this. Corollary to that is I think Gen X is the first generation to question do I really have to take care of my parents when they're old just because they're my parents? Whether that means physically taking care of them or whether that means financially taking care of them or both. That was not a question for my parents about theirs. You will do it. You will physically andor financially handle it. That is what you do. And I think Gen X women and some Gen X men are like, oh no, I'm doing that. I don't know. Maybe that's in addition to being the bridge generation, we're like the questioning generation, we're like the doubting generation. What if I don't? Um also and I know that my son will disagree with this, but I don't give a shit. We are cool, damn it. Gen X is cool, and here's how I know kids make social media videos to songs that we used to listen to while we got drunk in a field and smoked Marlboro lights. Stuff that was in like the art and culture of our day is still cool in the art and culture of today. Not all of it, don't get me wrong. There are some things I play, and my kid and his friends are like, What is this? But they also know incredible amounts of film, TV, and music of things that I loved when I was the same age that they are. Has that ever happened before? I remember my parents being like, You should listen to Linda Ronstadt. It's great, or you should listen to the Beach Boys. Or I'm like, okay. Yes, it's objectively fine, right? The stones were like, the Rolling Stones were like kind of a crossover. My parents didn't even like them that much. But I don't think anyone's ever been like riding in the car in their 50s, and a song comes on, and you're like, oh, I remember like making out with somebody at a school dance to this song, and then the 14-year-old next to you knows all the words and is like, oh, this is a fucking banger. Has that ever happened before? I don't think so. We're cool. We also are cool because we were there for the invention, for the initiation of a lot of things that are still like important today, like hip hop. We were fucking there. We remember the first albums. You know, I watched um straight out of Compton with my kid, and he was like, Who are all you know, who's that? And I'm like, that is Dr. Dre. He's like, Oh, I didn't. I'm like, yeah, I was there when that shit started, man. Like, we were there. Movies, big movies. Like, yeah, there was like Gone with the Wind and Lawrence of Arabia or whatever. But we were there when like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark and the superhero movies and all that stuff. That stuff happened in our lifetime. So we feel like it began with us. We feel like that's part of us, and that stuff is still around. Um, sports, big sports franchises where you can watch this stuff on TV. Right? So you can be a fan of a team that isn't where you live. Selling jerseys and and you know, the players becoming celebrities and all of that. That was us. That was our lifetime that that stuff happened in. So we feel like we own it. And then, of course, the internet and cell phones, which is why we're the bridge, because we lived the first half of our lives without it and the second half of our lives with it. Um, you can stop any Gen X person on the street and ask them, and they will tell you right off the top of their head what was the first cell phone they had and what was the first thing they searched on the internet. Because we remember that was like a huge transition in our lives. Which leads me to the last point, which is that I think we are the first generation that we are at this stage of our lives, whatever you want to call it. Mid middle, is it middle age? I don't know. Um, we're at this stage of our lives, 40s and 50s, and maybe I don't think it goes up to 60s, but you know, this part of our life where we know shit. Okay. We've been around the block, we have experience, we have wisdom. Um, we've seen a lot, we've done a lot, we've fucked up a lot, right? We have wisdom to share for sure. But at the same time, we know that there is so much that we don't know. And I don't think that's how it's been in the past. I feel like with the baby boomers and the silent generation, when they got to our age, they were like, Well, I know everything now. They weren't planning on learning anything new. They were like, I got it. I, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go out there and learn any new. I feel like they were like, I got it. I'm not gonna learn anything new. Whereas for us, we're like, yeah, I know shit, and I have experience and wisdom and all that kind of stuff. But we also were like, God, there's so much. Whereas for us, we're like, yeah, I have experience and wisdom, but there's also so much I don't know. And I think we we're in the same position as young people, including sometimes our kids, where we're like, there's just infinite things to know out there. Yes, I would like to watch the documentary on the octopus and then look at a million TikToks and YouTube videos on the octopus because I need to learn about octopus shit. Right? So I think that we are the first where it's like, yeah, I know stuff and I'm wise, but also I keep wanting to keep learning, at least those of us who are listening to this podcast who are like-minded. I want to keep learning things. Which I think makes us pretty fucking powerful. But I don't feel that way. I feel how much I don't know all the time. Right? Like, oh my God, there's so much to know. And I can't know at all. But really, what that is, I guess, is how much is available to me. For civil disorder this week, we're gonna do sort of like a general docket check. We're just gonna look at all the cases that I am currently following that are not lively versus Wayfair. Although I know there's still pieces hanging on, and I'm not gonna leave you hanging at the end. Um, and there are cases that come up like here and there where I'll just sort of cover it generally, like the Patagonia uh dispute. But these are the cases that I am following that I intend to follow all the way until they reach some kind of resolution. And I've put them in groups, I've put them in groups for types of cases because that's how my brain thinks of them as a lawyer. Like, well, we've got this kind of case and this kind of case. And so I think organizing them that way will probably make it easier for you as well to like kind of put them in different categories rather than it just being like a free-for-all. So the first category is employment cases. Um, and we have quite a few, actually. I call anything that arises out of employment an employment case. And, you know, I think at some point I'm gonna do like a longer video. But legally speaking, the relationship that an employee has with their employer is the most significant legal relationship you have in your life, other than if you are married and you are legally tied to somebody. And so many legal issues can come out of that. Yes, there can be discrimination, and that's what several of our cases are, but there's also other things, like in Jones versus Abel, where it's all coming out of contracts. What are the contract responsibilities, right? Laws don't just apply because some legislature passes a law. Laws apply because we voluntarily submit ourselves to do things. In Jones versus Abel, we've got non-competes, we've got contracts, we've got data, right? We've got the whole thing with Jennifer Abel's cell phone. Um, there's an August case management conference in that case, and I don't know if anything is going to happen until then. I think this is one of those cases where, like, if you if you're not yet done with the whole lively set of cases and you're like, I need more, I was so invested in that case, I need more, then you can definitely make this case part of that. Whereas if you are on the other end and you're like, I never want to hear those people's names ever again, I'm done with that case, I'm washing my hands of it, you can treat it that way too. And you can treat it as if it's just another case. And frankly, like, are there even really two sides? I mean, I know legally there are, but in terms of like trying to figure out if there's teams in this one, is anyone on team Stephanie Jones? I can't imagine. We also, of course, have the JP Morgan Chase case with the sex slave allegations. If you take out the sex slave part and the virality of that, this is a very normal discrimination case to me, right? If you just look at, like, say, the uh race discrimination allegations, and it's like, okay, you've got an employee. They claim that they are being discriminated against based on race. You put them on administrative leave, all kinds of crazy shit happens. You try to settle with them, they go to court. Like that part of it is very normal. What is not normal is the fact that it went viral and now we've got a counterclaim for defamation. The one thing we do not have in that case is JP Morgan's response to the complaint. They have not responded yet. Hajini did, but JP Morgan is the employer. Only they can be held responsible under these state employment laws because they are employers. Um, it would not surprise me if they are in ongoing discussions with the plaintiff saying, how about you give us an extension to respond to the complaint while we discuss potential settlement? Um, but that is a piece of the puzzle we haven't seen yet. So if they move to dismiss, then we'll have to go through that whole thing. If they don't, we're gonna move right into discovery on this case, which would be fascinating. I will never forget about Tyler Perry, who has two cases against him by two different men. Now, one of them is more of an assault case, um a civil assault case, but both of these situations arise out of the fact that these men at some point worked for Tyler Perry. Um, and they both have stunningly similar allegations about things he said and did. There are two cases. Um, one of them is in Georgia in federal court because Perry had it moved there, and there's motion to dismiss practice going on there. One is in California state court. Perry tried to have that one moved up to federal court too, and the federal court kicked it back. And there's some fighting going on with Lionsgate, um, who was also a defendant trying to get out of the case. So they are deep into motion to dismiss practice in both of those cases, and I will keep following them. But it really fascinates me how little the mainstream media cares uh when two men say that someone who controlled their workplace promised them um professional benefits for engaging in sex acts and then stuck his hand down their pants. No one seems to care about that. But I'm gonna keep talking about it. Uh, we also have Garth Brooks. Everyone will ask me about that every once in a while. And that one was like a big explosion, and then it like went dark, right? So this former hairstylist, makeup artist um who worked for Garth Brooks and for Tricia Yearwood claims that not only did he harass her, that he full-on raped her. They are very disturbing allegations. She sued him in California, and he's like, you know what, I'm gonna sue you right back in Mississippi. And long story short, one of the cases is on appeal on this issue of can she proceed anonymously? Like she doesn't want everyone to know who she is. And both of the cases are kind of on hold while the court figures that out. So they're both on hold for the moment. But at some point, that's going to be decided and they're going to explode again. It does not look like they are having any kind of settlement discussions. Also, as I was reminding myself, refreshing myself on that case, guess who represents Garth Brooks? Will Hugh Farr. They just keep popping up all over the place. I consider this an employment case-ish, but I'm just going to put it in that bucket. This is the case by the parents of the Idaho four who have sued Washington State University for essentially negligence and violating certain other laws, claiming that it is their fault that Coburger was not kicked out of school, forced to leave, sanctioned, otherwise punished when he worked there because they knew that this guy was escalating and they knew that he was dangerous and they didn't do anything about it. There is a status hearing in that case on June 1st. So by the time you hear this podcast, it will have happened already. There is a public call-in number, but I am going to call in and listen to it. I really want there to be discovery in this case because I have done a lot of work in the higher education, safety, security uh space. And I know a lot about this stuff. This is my lane. So I'd really like to see what this discovery looks like if we get there. I guess I will find out in the status conference, and I'll tell you what I know. The next category of cases are what I'm going to call public speech cases. So these can be defamation or any case that's about like stuff people said in public, which is a lot of high-profile civil cases, right? So we've got um the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives case. We've got Marciano versus Demi, um, where he has sued her for defamation, and the production company for the allegations that she made that he sexually assaulted her. That one's gotten pretty messy pretty fast. It's in federal court in Utah. Um, the production company, it's called Jeff Johnson Productions, I think, is fighting with or was fighting with Marciano pretty hard on a whole bunch of issues. And they seem to have kind of said, you know what, forget it. Let's just go ahead and file an answer and get this case moving. Demi is waiting on a ruling on whether she can file a pro-speech motion in Utah federal court. But I think what's happening is that Marciano, from the beginning, he said, I want the video. He wants that video from the Vanderpump villa that shows what actually happened. And maybe he also wants some of the footage that's on the cutting room floor from that season of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives to see what Demi was saying and whether production had reason to believe that it wasn't true. So he's desperate to get to that stage of things. I thought at the beginning that this might be a PR case. And I think it definitely like fits into the PR of reality TV, but I think he's for real. Um the way that these briefs are written and they're they're very well written. He has good lawyers. I don't think he's fucking around. Um, I don't think he's gonna get any money out of her. You can't get blood from a turnip. Does she even have a job? I don't know. Um, but I think it's very important to him that people know. I think the minute he gets that video and discovery, he's gonna put it on the internet. And I can't say that I blame him. In this space, we also have the Haley Bailey case, um, as she is known on the internet. Haley Khalil, she is being sued by her former husband, Matt Khalil, for invasion of privacy for some things she said about him in public. She has filed a motion to dismiss. There was a hearing, we're waiting on ruling. In the meantime, she continued to be in the SI swimsuit issue. Her argument is uh on the motion to dismiss, is that he doesn't have any privacy because they were a public couple. And so there's no reason that she can't speak about him publicly. She obviously considers herself to be in public. She's out there doing the SI swimsuit issue. He says that when they got divorced, that stopped. So we will see what the judge says there. But I find that one fascinating. We've also got in this space the case about the pit, the TV show, about the ruling by the lower court that this was not something that could just be thrown out on free speech grounds. Um, that has been appealed to the California Appeals Court and it sits there. Now, also in this space is Jed Wallace, right? Jed Wallace's case against Blake Lively is a defamation case. Um, it was dismissed as against Blake Lively for lack of personal jurisdiction. He has appealed that. Um, I have talked about his initial brief. Their response brief should be coming any minute, and I will cover that as well. But Jed does not look like he's gonna back down on that either. So that one's gonna keep on going, at least for a while. And then finally, we have the sort of leftover case of the New York Times versus Wayfair, where the New York Times is trying to say that the decision that was made by Judge Lyman in throwing Wayfarer's case out in June of 2025 entitles them to attorney's fees under the New York state pro-speech law. And they're fighting over whether the fact that the rest of the case was settled matters. Um, we are kind of waiting to see what Wayfarer's response to that is and what the next action in that case is going to be. It is not clear. Um, again, they may be talking behind the scenes, but that is definitely still on my radar. The next set of cases is the sports cases. And I gotta say, I'm a sports girl, I love sports. I always have, I am married to a sports bro, and I have birthed another sports bro. And while I do find these cases fascinating because I do like sports, following these cases is like the thing that keeps me cool in my house because they're like, oh, you know about that. You know, I'm like, yeah, I probably know more about it than you. So I'm gonna keep covering them because if for no other reason, I know some people like them. I know some people have said that their spouses like them. Um, it makes me cool at my house. So I'm just gonna keep right on doing that. This Damon Wilson case will not go away. So this is one of the first, it might have been the first sports case that I talked about. No, the NASCAR antitrust suit was the first case I talked about that was sports. This was the second. So Damon Wilson was a player who played for the University of Georgia. He had an NIL deal with them, as they all do. He decided to enter the transfer portal and he transferred to Missouri. And there was a um provision under his NIL deal with Georgia where they said you have to pay us X number of dollars. And he said, Go fuck yourself. Um, and so they tried to take him to arbitration. In response to that, he decided to sue them back. So Damon Wilson filed a case in Missouri State Court against the university. So Damon Wilson sued the University of Georgia in Missouri State Court, saying that NIL deal is unenforceable. I'm not paying the money, which isn't important for this whole like, you know, cadre of cases trying to figure out how this is going to work because there are multiple athletes who are challenging these NIL deals, especially when they change to another school. He says he was coerced. He says they shoved this thing in front of my face right before I was about to play in a conference championship game. This was signed under duress, it shouldn't be enforceable, which is an argument that a lot of these athletes could make. Um the problem is it never got served on the University of Georgia, because of course Georgia's in Georgia and Missouri is not anywhere near there. So it just sort of sat there dormant. But when I checked on it, Damon Wilson has now gotten a new lawyer in the last couple of weeks. Um, and they have gotten a new summons and they're gonna go try to serve Georgia now. So apparently they are still fighting about this. What's hilarious is that he doesn't even play for Missouri anymore. Now he plays for Miami. So these guys jump around, but the disputes remain. Which leads me to Brendan Soresby. Y'all, Brendan Soresby has lost his damn mind. And I know that gambling is an addiction, and I know that it is real and that he is struggling with it. But he is just filing things everywhere in the hopes that something will stick. You know, he was sued by the University of Cincinnati for these liquidated damages in his NIL deal, saying, like you said, you know, you signed this document that said if you left, you'd pay us this money. And you left and you won't pay us the fucking money. And he had this lawyer file this insane motion to dismiss that says, oh, this isn't really NIL. He's an employee. And it's like, but the NCAA says explicitly they're not and they're not allowed to be. Um then the whole gambling thing comes out, um, and he has to go to rehab and he gets suspended, and he's in this whole thing with the NCAA about, you know, is this the end of his season or worse, is he gonna get like a lifetime ban? So he files another case, a Hail Mary case in Lubbock, Texas, saying, Well, I want an injunction forcing the NCAA to allow me to play, to allow me eligibility because this all happened because I have a disease. Now, what's interesting is that that case was filed. Like, we need to have an emergency injunction hearing because you know the football season is only so long, and the NCAA is dragging its feet, investigating this and making a decision. Well, right after they did that, the NCAA made a decision. They're like, dude, you're not playing. So there is a hearing this week in Texas about whether he can get any relief from the NCAA's decision. I think the chances are incredibly slim. Now, he does have on his team for this case that guy, Jeffrey Kessler, who is like the antitrust. If you want to sue the NCAA or a league or whatever sports guy, he's the guy. He's been on every single one of these big cases and he's damn good. I'm gonna try to get him on this podcast at some point. Um, so if anybody could do it, he could do it. But it just raises this issue to me of like, how much is any one player worth? Like, what a pain in the ass. You know, I don't think anybody's that good to warrant all of this. If you're Texas Tech, it's like, yeah, he's good, but like we could just get another guy. How good can anybody be? So I'll keep you updated on that. I'm also gonna start covering on the sports docket, though it's also an employment case. A case that was filed several years ago. It's been caught up in procedural issues and appeals, is now finally gonna get started again. And that is the case filed by Brian Flores and two other coaches in the NFL claiming that the NFL discriminates against black coaches and black executives. And it's a fascinating case. They've been dealing with an arbitration issue. They tried to get it to go to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court this week was like, nope, we're not going there. I'm gonna do a long video on it. This is a complaint that you will want to read. The way that this is framed and the statistics that they include about black coaches not only getting hired, but how many chances they get in the NFL, you know, before they get kicked versus how many chances white coaches get is absolutely fascinating. Then we've got just this like miscellaneous bucket of stuff that, you know, we've been following that doesn't really fit into any category other than we give a shit about it. Um, that's Lululemon versus Costco. That one's been sitting for a while. It's pretty boring because they had this whole like side issue about one pair of pants and one jacket. We're waiting for that to get wrapped up so we can move on to the rest of the case. Um, we've got Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and their never-ending battle about their winery and that whole vineyard and uh estate. They are fighting about French nationals and whether they can be involved in the case as parties or deposed, is pretty tikky-tacky. But you know what's so interesting is that what I see in the news about these people while all of this is going on is story after story after story about all of those kids dropping Brad Pitt's last name. Every single one of them, when they turn 18, drops his name. And I know that Maddox, I think, just did it, who's the second to youngest, and then the twins are last. And I believe they turn 18 this summer, and I bet they're gonna do it too. Um, and it's really fascinating because people I've noticed in my comments when I talk about that case have really strong opinions about her, especially with the whole Jennifer Anderson thing. And she's kind of a dark, interesting character and the kissing her brother and the wearing of the blood around her neck and all that. She's done some weird shit. Um, but when you have six kids and none of them want to be associated with you, I think Brad Pitt should just be glad that character evidence isn't admissible in court. That's all I'm gonna say. The Karen Reed cases. There are so many now, and I will be honest with you, like I struggle with how to cover those because there are so many people who are so invested in Karen Reed, um, and they were invested for years and they know so much more about the facts than I do. And I don't think that's my lane. I think my lane is when a criminal case turns civil, you know, what are the differences? How do you prove these things? And so the one I'm the most interested in is the federal case, the federal civil rights case. Um if you remember, I haven't covered this in a while. Um, Karen Reed filed her complaint against Proctor, Tully, Buchananic, and then what they call the House defendants, the citizens, right? The Alberts, the McCabes, and Higgins, claiming that they were all engaged in a conspiracy to deprive her of her civil rights. Um the House defendants filed a pro-speech response to that, saying this case should be kicked out because it violates our free speech. Rather than respond to that, Reed filed a new complaint where she added, like, I mean, I don't remember how long the thing is. Every single fact they've got, that is a really good read as well. Every single fact they've got um that supports their allegations that these people framed her for this murder. Um, and the House defendants turn around and file the exact same kind of motion to the new complaint. So um, you know, I don't know whether the judge, this is in federal court in Massachusetts, is going to have a hearing on this. Um I kind of hope they do, because I'd kind of like to go. Um, but this case can't go anywhere until they get past this motion. Um, there are some interesting legal issues in there about whether the Massachusetts pro-speech law covers this, whether some prior case law has been uh overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Um, and I will talk about all of that um at some point um in a video. But um, what's not being reported by anybody, and I just think it's a big deal, is that as part of the response to the defendant's pro-speech motion, their motion, they have a pro-speech motion to dismiss and also a regular motion to dismiss, like 12 B6, she fails to state a claim under which relief can be granted. Because the pro-speech motion, one of the issues on these kinds of motions is that unlike a regular motion to dismiss, you can actually consider evidence. On a regular motion to dismiss, you can only consider the allegations and the complaint. You have to assume that they're true. But when you're talking about these special motions, you can consider evidence, which means that in response to that motion, the Reed side can give evidence to try to combat this motion. And they have done so. And one of the things they have provided is an affidavit from Karen Reed. And I think this is a huge deal because it is the first time in any of these cases where Karen Reed has testified under oath. Now, I believe that in the wrongful death case where she is the defendant in Massachusetts state court, she has been deposed at this point. We haven't seen it. But she didn't testify in either one of the trials. She talked to like Dateline and stuff, and she talked to documentarians. But in terms of saying things under oath under penalty of perjury, we have not yet seen her do that. And she has now done it in the federal case. The affidavit literally says, you know, I'm 18 years old, whatever, I was acquitted by a jury. She says these things under oath for the first time. I did not cause and am not responsible for Mr. O'Keefe's death. I did not strike Mr. O'Keefe with my car. I dropped Mr. O'Keefe off at 34 Fairview Road in Canton, Massachusetts, contrary to what the Commonwealth claimed in my criminal trial and what the defendants now assert. Mr. O'Keefe and I did not have an altercation before I dropped him off at the Alberts House. And then she talks about what she has suffered and how this has turned her life upside down. But that is the first time that I have ever seen or read under oath Karen Reed saying, I did not do this. These things are not true. And that to me is a very big deal. So I'm waiting to see whether there's going to be a hearing on this particular motion. In the Howard Stern case, that one keeps getting more and more interesting to me. There's been some new filings this. Week that I will again explain in a video. But the plaintiff's lawyer is trying to sort of uh strike back at Stern. So you may remember that Stern's former employee, Leslie Kuhn, filed her case saying they are trying to enforce NDAs against me that are not valid. And I want this court to declare that these NDAs are not valid. So I do not need to worry about them. In response to that, Stern's people filed a motion to dismiss and a motion for sanctions saying, here are the um signatures on these NDAs that are absolutely enforceable. And here's the metadata on when she signed it. And oh, by the way, her lawyer is lying about the conversations that we've had. So now Kuhn's lawyer is snapping back at that and saying, Oh, that's interesting. You've supplied us with the NDA with metadata. Well, I've done my own metadata analysis. And the document that you claim Leslie Kuhn signed is a PDF. And when I put that thing into Adobe, all of the sections that you say she filled out, like her name, the date of her signature, on Adobe show up as Adobe comments by somebody named Ira. So now Kuhn's lawyer is saying, this is not what you're claiming it is. This is what she's been saying since the beginning is they're claiming I signed stuff I didn't sign. So they are having a full-blown dispute about the authenticity of this NDA, of multiple NDAs, which usually you don't get into this early in the case. That's usually like a legal issue that you bring up, like summary judgment or whatever. But they are having a full-on battle. And because it's Stern and Stern wanted to put everything on the docket, now Kuhn is putting everything on the docket as well. It's fascinating. So I will do a video on that this week as well. They have also raised this issue of um, okay, bet the NDA that you say she signed, that you say is enforceable, is between Leslie Kuhn and 112, which is Stern's like company, like his management company. Right? The party is 112. But you're also saying that the NDA covers Stern personally and his wife personally. But how can it? Because it only covers the company. Now you could probably make an argument that if it's Stern's company and he is the one who owns the company, that maybe that extends, but it probably doesn't extend to Beth. So these are fascinating uh arguments, in my opinion. Um and then finally, of course, we have Amy Griffin, which I cannot believe that no one in the mainstream media is covering this thing. When and if this case explodes, it is going to be huge. And no one is covering it. And, you know, Katie and KC has started covering it a little bit. We are really the only ones, except for I know Megan Kelly did one episode on it, and um, I can't remember her name. I think it's Maureen, who's another uh gossip podcaster, has covered it. Um, but it, you know, I have a video on TikTok that has two million views on it about this, and still nobody's covering it. And I have suspicions, but I'm fascinated by that. They have a hearing this week on Discovery, the same, basically an extension of the hearing they had last week. What we know at this point is that Griffin's lawyers, again, it's Wilkie Farr, they are playing real dirty. They are, and they are proud of themselves for playing dirty. Um, they like it. This is who they are. Um, so we still don't know if Sam Lansky has been served. Um, and we still don't know what's gonna get filed in response to the complaint by Griffin or Penguin. Um, but they're down in the mud in this one. And as we leave this section, I want to be clear that the reason that I keep saying I'll do a video on it, I do a video on it, is because this is an overview episode. I don't mean to say um I'm not gonna talk about this case on the podcast. There are so many cases now that I have to sort of figure out which ones to talk about and how much. Because if I talked about them all, this would be a six-hour podcast, right? Um, so I'm still figuring out how to do that. But because this is an overview episode, I'm telling you what I'm going to cover. And then that allows me to cover it more in depth when I make individual videos. So if you have a better way of me doing it, please let me know. But right now I'm just sort of trying to grapple with that. And maybe the answer to that is I'm gonna do more than one podcast a week, which is something that I'm thinking about. But give me your feedback and just bear with me. Finally, for Legal Ease this week, I know we've all been like learning a lot. And if you're following the 47.1 stuff with Blake Lively, your head is probably spinning as mine is, as I frankly think the judge's is. So for Legal Ease this week, I'm gonna do something that's a little bit um bigger than that, like in terms of 30,000-foot view, where you don't have to get all granular about the law, and that is pre-suit disputes. Because as you've seen in many of these cases, you can definitely see it in the CERN case, where they are putting all of the pre-suit conversations on the court docket. Um, and you know, when we were talking to Kevin Fritz, he said at the end, you know, I think this case probably could have been resolved without litigation. I think people ought to know that tons and tons of matters are dealt with pre-suit, or there never is a suit to begin with. Um, for everything that gets filed, there's probably 10 things that get threatened and dealt with and not filed. So when people talk about working in litigation, a lot of working in litigation is not in court. It is in emails and phone calls dealing with people saying, Hey, we're gonna sue you, do you want to talk about it? Hey, we're gonna sue you, here's how much we think we deserve. People constantly, lawyers constantly send demand letters and threats to sue, far more often than they actually go to court and pay filing fees. If a lawyer thinks that they have a halfway decent case, and particularly plaintiffs' lawyers, if they think they have a defendant who's insured or otherwise has a pocket of money that they can throw some nuisance dollars at, they will more often than not send a letter first or an email or whatever and say, like, hey, here's what we think our claims are. Do you want to just go ahead and settle this? So when you get a demand letter, your job is to figure out, is this really a case I need to worry about? How much merit is there? What does our defense look like? Do we have people that can testify about this? I will tell you in doing employment litigation that one of the hardest things is when you're like, you know, is if you're representing the employer, it's like, oh, we've got a great case. The problem is all of the witnesses who can prove that we have a great case don't work here anymore. Sometimes they're friendly, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they've moved very far away. So you're kind of figuring out what will litigation look like? Whose problem do I want to make it, right? That this person now lives on the other side of the world. Um, but you're sort of trying to game out like what will happen? Like, what's the strategy if they file, and what's the strategy if they don't file? You know, the earlier that you can assess a case, the better. Because you can sort of figure out like, what am I dealing with here? Is this one potentially really scary, or is this one like, eh, who cares? Is this a case where it's like, you know, it's probably worth 10 grand to make this thing go away? It's gonna cost 10 grand worth of attorney's fees just to get this dismissed anyway. Or if it's on a really important issue for a client, it's like, uh, I don't know, I think maybe we go to court and have the judge tell us. So these things are happening all the time behind the scenes and nobody knows about them. In employment cases in particular, a lot of times demands are made before lawsuits are filed. Because, you know, even if it's a discrimination case, you're gonna have to go all the way through the EEOC or the state law thing first. And that can take time. Um, a lot of discrimination cases too get filed internally with HR or an EEO office or whatever you've got. So a lot of employment and a lot of employment claims are people have either lost their jobs or didn't get a job or got demoted, and they need cash in hand now. And so they will settle for less than they think their case is worth just to have some money to put in their bank account. So in employment law, this happens constantly. It's happening all the time, sometimes through lawyers and sometimes not. Now, there are rules about whether lawyers can talk to an opposing party, and you have to kind of navigate those. Um, but you know, just because you see something on a docket, the fact that something shows up on a docket and that's the first the defendants hear of it is actually pretty rare in an employment case. That's one of the things that made the lively case so weird. But sometimes you get a demand and you're like, oh, that's fucking bananas, and you laugh at it and you're like, that's adorable that you think you're gonna get anywhere near there, and you sort of write them a letter and say, I'm not even gonna counteroffer. Like, good luck with that. We'll see you in court. Sometimes you play around with them a little bit and say, you know, I've got a document that's gonna fix this for me, so I'm not worried about you. And see if they know what you're talking about. Sometimes you're playing a game with the lawyer to see if their client has told them everything, right? When you're in pre-suit discussions, nobody has subpoena power yet. Nobody has the ability to do discovery yet. There's no rules. You don't have to follow any rules. Um, it's just the wild west of negotiations, which can make it much more fun, but can also make it harder because you can't require anybody to give you anything or tell you anything, right? You know, I've had demand letters sent to me before, and it's like, you know, we've got an email that proves that a supervisor did X. And I'm like, well, can I see it? And they say, no, I don't have to give that to you. I'm like, well, then I'm not gonna write you a check either. Like, you're really just gaming the whole thing out. And it is like pure negotiation and strategy. Whoever, whatever side you're on, whether you're the plaintiff or the defendant, you are trying to convince the other side that their case isn't as good as yours, and that we could just avoid all of the humiliation that the other side is going to feel if we just settle this now. Um, and so you have to start gathering information and feeling people out and seeing what you can get. There are circumstances, particularly in employment cases, where um people will say, let's do a mediation, let's do a pre-suit mediation. I've had a couple of those in the past couple of years where the issues were really sticky and it's like this is gonna be really complicated, long-drawn-out litigation. Um, do you want to just go ahead and do a pre-suit mediation? You don't have to have a case file to do a mediation. You can do a mediation whenever you want. You just hire a mediator. The only thing you really have to consider in a situation like that is you have to, if you're the plaintiff, you have to make sure that the statute of limitations doesn't run while you are mediating. But cases get resolved by other means far more often than they go to court. Litigation is not just people standing up in court and making arguments. It is negotiating from an office. It is writing nasty emails. It is convincing people that their case isn't very good, not in front of a judge, but directly to them. One thing that is really important, though, that I was lucky enough to have a mentor early on who taught me this. And this is playing out in the Stern case. You even saw it play out in the Lively case. Once you get into it, when you're doing whether it's pre-suit or demand letters or whatever, once lawyers start creating documents about a dispute, you have to assume that every single document that you create is potentially going to be evidence if there is, in fact, something filed. I remember early on in my career, I was working with someone who was like one of those litigators that like he just lived for the fight. You know, he loved fighting with, he loved litigation. And um, we were in a pre-suit dispute with somebody and we were kind of sending nasty crams back and forth. And I had written a letter about something, and he was reviewing it, and he came to me and said, Do you know what this letter is? And I said, It's a letter about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said, No, that's not what it is. This is exhibit A. He said, When you are in a dispute, every single thing that you say can become evidence. Even parts of settlement negotiations, I know that I always say that's a sacred confidentiality, and it is. But a lot of times you'll discuss settlement, but you'll also discuss other things together. He's like, you just never know what's going to get pulled up as evidence. So if you're a lawyer and you're creating documents, you're not free and clear just because you're a lawyer. If you're writing them to the other side, that's not privileged. You're giving it to the enemy. Um so next time you're thinking about, you know, what does litigation entail? Yeah, it entails all the TV stuff, like taking depositions and, you know, spending long nights in the library and all that. But it also includes just a lot of like assessing what does this case, is it good? Do we fight it? What grounds do we have to fight it? If you're the plaintiff, do we file it? What's it worth? Is it going to be worth it for us to file this, depending on how much it's going to cost? How far can we let it go before it becomes a monetary problem for the lawyer? Like all those kinds of things. Um so give that a thought and let me know what questions you have. Um, I have started a playlist on YouTube called Legal Reality T-E-A, where I am going to be dropping videos about just like the practice of law, all the stuff you guys are always asking me about, like, how does that work? Um, I did a video on big law firms and how they work. I'm gonna do one on contingency fees, right? How do lawyers charge clients? And I think that this would be a good one of sort of like, what is litigation day-to-day really? What does it actually look like? Um, so please let me know what questions you have or things you've always wondered about that, and I will include them in one of those videos. Uh, but for now, I'm going to go watch it rain because it's Sunday, and a rainy Sunday is one of my favorite things on this earth. But I'll be back next week because the drama never stops, and someone has to make it make sense.