BL Opposition to JW motion for Discovery (District Court, W.D. Texas Docket Number: 1:25-cv-00163, #62)
Very interesting and relatively short read. BL makes many of the arguments raised here in the thread on JW’s filing, concluding:
“For weeks the Wallace Parties took the position behind closed doors that Ms. Lively was bound by a piece of paper that they now concede has never had any legal basis whatsoever. Their suggestion, now, that by ignoring that “Notice” Ms. Lively somehow “failed to appear” for a deposition is absurd. Tellingly, the Wallace Parties do not have the temerity to ask for fees or sanctions in connection with that purported “failure,” nor could they, given their concession in the same brief that such a notice could only have been valid with leave of court. It is indefensible even to suggest that Rule 37 sanctions could apply to Ms. Lively’s refusal to put up with a lawless deposition notice—and can only be understood as a further attempt to attack Ms. Lively’s reputation with unsupported
accusations of wrongdoing that Mr. Wallace can then propagate into the social media universe.
The only alternative is worse: namely, that the Wallace Parties served the sham deposition
notice not because they thought they had a basis to do so absent leave of court, but as a leverage
play to pressure Ms. Lively to drop her fee claims. The circumstances of the Wallace Parties’ initial
email to Ms. Lively’s counsel speak for themselves, as does the Wallace Parties’ later concession
that there was no lawful basis to serve a deposition notice at that time.”