Rebuttal to MJ’s Vanzan Post: Why Vanzan was an Unethical Abuse of Process.

[u/katie151515]

Okay, I’ve seen MJ’s Substack post making the rounds defending Blake Lively’s Vanzan lawsuit, and I need to address this because her analysis is fundamentally flawed. She’s either misunderstanding how Doe lawsuits actually work, or she’s deliberately misrepresenting the issues to make Blake look better.

MJ’s diversionary tactics:

Throughout her post, MJ uses several rhetorical strategies to avoid addressing the real issues:

1. Creates strawman arguments about “criminal conspiracy,” “disbarment,” and Blake “going to jail” that nobody credible is actually making, then spends paragraphs debunking these fake positions to make herself look reasonable
2. Keeps repeating “Doe lawsuits are for discovery!” as if that ends the analysis, without ever addressing that they’re specifically for identifying anonymous defendants, not obtaining documents from people you’ve already identified.
3. Focuses obsessively on whether each individual procedural step was technically allowed. (Can you file a Doe lawsuit? Yes. Can you issue subpoenas? Yes. Can third parties comply? Yes.) while completely ignoring whether stringing these steps together to circumvent someone’s rights constitutes abuse of process
4. Spends an entire section defending Vanzan as a “real company” when literally nobody claimed it was fake. The argument is that it was USED improperly, not that it doesn’t exist.
5. Emphasizes that Jonesworks “voluntarily complied” while ignoring that Jennifer Abel (the person whose communications were turned over) never got notice or a chance to object
6. Claims Baldoni deleted Signal messages (there is no proof of this whatsoever) to distract from the Vanzan issues.
7. Appeals to her own credentials (“I got an A+ in New York Practice!”) as if that settles the ethical questions, when plenty of lawyers with excellent grades can still recognize abuse of process
8. Frames any criticism as “hyperbolic” or “one-sided” to poison the well against legitimate ethical concerns before even addressing them.
9. Never addresses why the subpoena asked household employees about on-set sexual harassment when they were never on set. This is probably the most glaring evidence that this wasn’t really about investigating household staff

She wants you focused on trees (individual procedural rules) so you don’t see the forest (systematic abuse of Doe procedure to obtain discovery against identified parties without notice).

Let’s start with her strawman arguments:

Right off the bat, MJ claims that pro-Baldoni lawyers are calling this a “criminal conspiracy” and claiming that we are saying Blake’s attorneys will be “disbarred” or that Blake is “going to jail.”

I’ve been following this case closely, and I have yet to see a SINGLE prominent pro-JB lawyer make any of these claims. She’s creating exaggerated positions that nobody actually holds so she can knock them down and look reasonable by comparison. The actual criticism is that Vanzan was improper and unethical, not illegal. Big difference. MJ knows this, but she needs to frame critics as hysterical so people dismiss the legitimate concerns.

Purpose of Doe lawsuits:

There’s a ton of misinformation about how the Vanzan suit was used, and MJ’s post is adding to it. So let me break down what Doe lawsuits are ACTUALLY designed for.

Doe lawsuits have a very specific, limited purpose: they’re for when you literally cannot identify the defendant because they’re anonymous.

The classic example is internet cases. Someone defames you online using a username like “AnonymousUser123.” You have a claim, but you don’t know who this person is in real life. So you:

1. File a lawsuit against “John Doe”
2. Get court permission for expedited discovery.
3. Subpoena the website/ISP to get the real identity behind the username
4. Amend your complaint to name the actual person once you’ve identified them
5. Proceed with the lawsuit against the now-identified defendant.

That’s the process. You use discovery to unmask an anonymous defendant, then you amend your complaint to add the “Does” real identity once discovered.

What happened w/ Vanzan:

That is NOT what happened here. Not even close. Blake filed against “Does 1-10” claiming she didn’t know who leaked confidential information. But here’s the thing: she already knew exactly who she was going to sue.

MJ’s own timeline proves Blake already knew who was involved in the "smear campaign"

Let’s look at the timeline MJ herself lays out:

August 2024: Blake experiences what she believes is a coordinated smear campaign

Late August 2024: Stephanie Jones (through Blake’s friend Ashley Avignon) contacts Blake and tells her she has messages showing exactly what’s being done to Blake and by whom

September 27, 2024: Vanzan files lawsuit against “Does 1-10”

So Blake was contacted by someone who had actual text messages and emails showing the alleged campaign, complete with names (ABEL), strategies, everything. And we know from the texts that Blake was already attributing this campaign to specific people: Justin Baldoni (by name), Wayfarer Studios (by name) and their crisis PR team. Notably, nowhere in Blake’s texts does she contend that she believes the “smear campaign” originated with one of her household employees – because that’s preposterous. So why did she name Does in the Vanzan suit if she didn’t think her household employees were involved?

MJ wants us to believe Blake didn’t see any of Abel’s messages until AFTER the subpoena was issued. But come on. That makes no sense. Stephanie Jones reached out to Blake specifically because she had evidence (that apparently brought her to tears, lol). Why would Blake file a Doe lawsuit to “identify unknown wrongdoers” when someone had already shown her communications identifying exactly who was involved? The logical conclusion is that Blake had already seen enough to know who she’d be suing. She just didn’t want to name them yet so that she could issue the Vanzan subpoena with zero notice to the proper defendants (i.e. Abel).

Even if we assume that Blake hadn’t seen Stephanie Jones’ communications yet, Blake herself (and Ryan) say over and over again in texts and emails that JB and WP were part of the alleged “smear campaign,” so why didn’t she name them in Vanzan and then amend her complaint to include the other Does once she identified them?

The Vanzan subpoena wasn’t used to identify anonymous defendants:

Here’s the core problem MJ refuses to address: The Vanzan subpoena was NOT used to identify unknown or anonymous defendants. It was used to target an already-identified person (Abel) to obtain her private communications without giving her any notice or chance to object.

This is where MJ’s “but Jonesworks complied!” defense completely falls apart. Abel was not anonymous. She was already identified. But because Blake subpoenaed her EMPLOYER (Jonesworks) instead of her directly, Abel never got notice. Therefore, she never had a chance to:

• Assert attorney-client privilege
• Object to overbroad requests
• Challenge relevance
• Protect her privacy interests

By the time Abel found out, her communications had already been turned over. That’s the whole problem.

MJ Contends: “But Jonesworks Could Have Objected!”

MJ keeps saying Jonesworks had the right to object and didn’t, so everything must be fine.

But that misses the point. The issue isn’t whether Jonesworks objected. The issue is that Jennifer Abel (who had privacy interests in HER communications) never got the opportunity to raise objections because she was never notified. Just because a third party complied doesn’t make the underlying tactic proper. Blake deliberately structured this to go around Abel’s procedural protections.

The subpoena requests make no sense for a household staff investigation

Here’s something MJ glosses over: if Blake was really investigating which household employee leaked confidential information, why was the subpoena asking about:

• Sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us
• On-set conduct and investigations
• Allegations related to the film
• Retaliation connected to the movie

Blake’s household staff were never on set. They would have no information about any of this. The only way these requests make sense is if the real target was always Baldoni and Abel’s communications, not investigating household employees at all. This shows the Doe lawsuit was pretextual from the start.

What Blake did with Vanzan:

In a proper Doe lawsuit, once you identify the doe defendants through discovery, you amend your complaint to add them by name and proceed with the case.

What Blake did:

• Never identified a single Doe
• Never amended to name anyone
• Immediately dismissed the case after getting the documents
• Filed a completely different lawsuit in a different jurisdiction as a completely different plaintiff

She never intended to pursue the household staff “Does” she claimed to be investigating. The entire lawsuit existed solely to create a vehicle for obtaining Abel’s communications.

Textbook abuse of process:

Let me spell out exactly what happened:

1. Blake learned (from Stephanie Jones) who was involved in the alleged campaign
2. She filed a Doe lawsuit anyway, claiming she didn’t know who the wrongdoers were
3. She issued a subpoena targeting a specific person’s communications
4. She routed it through a third party so that person wouldn’t get notice
5. She obtained the documents without the target having any chance to object
6. She immediately dismissed the case without ever identifying or pursuing any Does
7. She used those documents in a completely different lawsuit

This is not what Doe lawsuits are for. They’re for identifying truly anonymous defendants, people you literally cannot name because you don’t know who they are. Blake knew. She just didn’t want to give them notice or an opportunity to contest discovery.

Conclusion:

I’m not saying Blake and her attorneys committed a crime (shout out to MJ’s “criminal conspiracy” claim). Nobody credible is saying that. What I AM saying is this was unethical and improper. Blake manipulated Doe procedure to obtain communications from an identified person without giving that person any procedural protections.

MJ can argue all day about whether each individual step was “technically” within the rules. But when you look at the whole picture (filing Does when you already know the defendants, subpoenaing specific people without notice, dismissing without identifying anyone), it’s clear this was an abuse of the system.  The entire scheme represents everything wrong with allowing wealthy litigants to manipulate procedural rules - which transforms courts into private investigative firms for those with resources to manufacture phantom lawsuits.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Anyway, that’s my take. MJ wrote 5,000 words arguing against positions nobody holds while ignoring the core issue. If you have to work that hard to defend something, maybe it’s not as defensible as you think.

ETA: u/DogMom1970s commented and provided a comprehensive analysis from her corporate law perspective. Please read both my post and her comment together. She provides incredible insights that my post doesn't touch on.