Law&Crime Sidebar - Nick Sandmann Suits Tossed, Elon Musk Urges Lawsuit, Britney Spears Wins In Court

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

Britney Spears will not have to sit for a deposition by her father’s attorneys as an investigation into her now-terminated conservatorship continues. But Jamie Spears will be deposed over allegations he and Britney’s managers spied on her an other matters. Plus, Nick Sandmann, the former Covington Catholic student who sued media outlets for defamation over a viral video of him with a Native American activist, loses defamation lawsuits he filed against media companies. First Amendment legend Floyd Abrams weighs in on Sandmann and Elon Musk urging a woman to sue after the WSJ claims he had an affair with her that ended her marriage to a Google co-founder. GUESTS:Liz Day, Journalist at The New York TimesFloyd Abrams, First Amendment Icon LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that will

keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Justice for Brittany. Justice for Brittany. Jail for Team Cod! Jail for Team Cod! Justice for Brittany. Justice for Brittany. Jail for Team Kind. Jail for Team Kind. It was another very good day in court for Britney Spears.

The judge confirmed her correct ruling that Mr. Spears will not be able to obtain the deposition of his daughter. Brittany Spears attorney Matthew Rosengart celebrating outside of court with Britney Spears's supporters. The decision was legally correct, but as a moral matter, it was correct. Brittany obtained her freedom last November, and as many of you know, particularly perhaps in light of recent news, Brittany is moving on with her life. She wants to move on with her life. And yet that man, her father, her flesh and blood, does not want that. as Judge Brenda Penny orders Jamie Spears to sit for a deposition and some other things were put by

the wayside. We'll get to that in just a moment. I'm Ann Janette Levy and welcome to this latest edition of Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. This is all about, of course, Britney Spears and her conservatorship, which was terminated by the court last November. And this is something Britney Spears was fighting for for many, many years, many years. She said she was basically being held hostage. Her father Jamie had wanted her to sit for a deposition because he was being made to sit for a deposition as well. Matthew Rosengart is a huge power player in Hollywood. He's a big time attorney. And he has vowed to get to the bottom of this conservatorship, why it was implemented, who implemented, who knew what, who did what. And joining us to talk about this is really an expert on the Britney Spears case.

She is Liz Day. She's a producer and reporter for the New York Times. She was in the Britney Spears documentary that the New York Times produced. So Liz, welcome back to Sidebar. We appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me. Liz, tell us really briefly what exactly happened in court yesterday. You were actually in the courtroom. So I was in court yesterday for the three hour hearing and there was a big win for Brittany and that the judge ruled she did not have to be deposed. So Jamie has to sit for a deposition by August 12th, but Brittany will not have to be deposed by her dad, which Brittany's lawyer had been calling a revenge deposition, basically to intimidate her, harass her, and get her to back off of this entire investigation of him.

And really, Matthew Rosengarde, he's not going to let this go. He is going to move forward with this. He wants to tell us exactly what he, the listeners and the viewers, what Matthew Rosengart wants to know, you know, aside from what I already mentioned. So Britney's conservatorship was terminated last year, but her lawyer, Matthew Rosengart, is still doing an investigation of the conservatorship, and it's largely focused around money. What happened to her money? Where did it go? Who profited? How much off of her conservatorship? He's also looking into misconduct by Jamie Spears and others who were involved, including her security firm, Blackbox

Security, and her business manager, TriStar Sports and Entertainment. And let's get to that part of it, because they were, there are emails that Matthew Rosengarde has submitted to the court showing that Lou Taylor and this company knew about the conservatorship when it was being formed and that they made a lot of money off of this. And there are also some really disturbing allegations that they were maybe aware of or part of this whole allegation that the bedroom of Britney Spears was bugged, that she was being spied on, eaves dropped on. Yes. So these emails are really important because TriStar had maintained for a really long time, both in court declarations and to the press, that they had no role in the conservatorship in creating it. And, you know, we at the New York Times have been threatened with legal letters from their lawyers stating this, you know, numerous times. We had no role in creating the conservatorship. So then Brittany's lawyer produces emails that he obtained through discovery that shows actually Lou Taylor was very involved in helping to create the conservatorship. She is, you know, helping in on discussions on

selecting which judge they should use and, you know, even suggesting she would serve as a co-conservator alongside Jamie. So that was really interesting. And then in terms of the surveillance and the spying operation that we at the New York Times exposed last year, our whistleblower, Alex Vlasov, said that TriStar staffer Robin Greenhill was involved in the spying operation. You know, She got reports on what Brittany was texting as they were monitoring her phone and capturing her text messages in real time. Wow. And Robin Greenhill and Lou Taylor, it's my understanding, or at least Robin Greenhill,

had tried to push back this court date because this was supposed to be discussed in court on Wednesday. But then you said they didn't get to it because they were arguing over other stuff. Exactly. So Robin Greenhill, the TriStar staffer, filed a last minute bid to delay this big hearing because she got new lawyers who, you know, previously he had represented Scientology and BlackCube. These are, you know, big new lawyers with relevant experience. The judge denied that request. And then at yesterday's hearing, they ran out of time before ruling on this TriStar issue. A lot of time was spent on really silly small stuff. There was like a 20. minute back and forth where Jamie's lawyer and Brittany's lawyer were, you know, being extremely fiery against each other over whether or not Brittany will have to reveal her address to her dad. And that seems really odd. I mean, I just can't even imagine why he would even need to know that

information. She obviously wants nothing to do with him. Yeah. So Jamie's lawyer seemed to be suggesting he had some puzzle that he was working on that might be trying to go after Britney's lawyer for, you know, breaking some sort of rule. So it was very, very in the weeds. But I think it's illustrative of kind of the delay and stalling tactics that have been going on in this case. Well, what comes next then? What's next for this case? So the TriStar issue will be heard again at a hearing at the end of August. And we know that. that by August 12, Jamie's going to be deposed by Brittany's lawyer. So that'll be really, really interesting to see what comes of that. And will we get any insight into that? Will he file

something with the court? Will we be able to, you know, obtain that? Will he have to file that, you know, that actual video? I'm assuming they will videotape it with the court? Yeah. So at the prior hearing, there was some back and forth over whether there will be a protective order over the deposition and it will be sealed. I hope that, you know, the learnings come from it will be public because there are a lot of really big questions that Britney's case can help us, you know, that are still open about Britney's case, that can help us understand how the conservatorship system works at large for, you know, over a million people across America. Yeah, most definitely. Well, we'll keep following it. And Liz, we know you are on top of it like

nobody else. So thanks so much, Liz Day, from the New York Times for joining us yet again on Sidebar. Thank you. That was Nick Sandman, a Covington Catholic high school student back in 2019, when he came face to face with Native American activist Nathan Phillips in Washington, D.C. Sandman was on a school trip, an annual trip for the March for Life, and he encountered Phillips and some other people. as they were waiting for the bus to go home, I actually covered this case very closely when I worked in local news in Cincinnati. It was a big, big deal. A lot of media outlets saw Nathan Phillips, a Native American with his drum beating on that and then saw Nicholas Sandman with a Make America Great Again, Red Hat on, and made an instant connection that he and his friends were doing something wrong and taunting Nathan Phillips. Nick Sandman, though, then turned around and sued a number of media. outlets for defamation over the coverage that they had of the case, basically saying a lot of things about him. He had already settled cases with CNN and the Washington Post. That happened a little while ago. And one thing that was interesting about this case was that it left

out, when you saw the initial video, it left out a lot of what had been going on beforehand, which included a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, actually taunting people and doing some things that kind of stirred a little bit of this up beforehand. So a lot of people have very strong opinions about this case. Some people think Nick Sandman was completely in the wrong. Others think Nathan Phillips was in the wrong. It's been very polarizing. Joining us to talk about this is First Amendment expert, a legend Floyd Abrams. Floyd, welcome to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on to talk with us about this. I'm glad to be here. So I want to ask you very briefly, you know, about the judge on Tuesday, throwing out, granting summary judgment to a number of

news outlets. I mean, Rolling Stone, CBS News, ABC News, the New York Times. These cases were filed some time ago, and the judge just said, no, I'm tossing these out. Your reaction? Well, I'm sort of curious about the reaction of those parties that already settled, you know. Right, that's what I'm wondering. But, I mean, basically what the court said, and it was a bunch of different bases for different claims by different plaintiffs. But a combination that some of the issues, some of the things that were said were not about Sandman. At the same time, a lot of what was said, and I would say that, this is the most important part of the opinion is what the court characterized as statements of opinion.

We don't allow libel suits, but based on false opinions. There's no such thing as a false opinion. There are factual statements which are untrue, and they can be the basis and are of libel suits. But what this judge said was that a number of the things that they were suing on were really just opinions, what to make of Sandman, how to review his behavior. And then there were some things the court said were not even defamatory. That is to say, some of the things that were said, which Sandman complained about, really didn't make them look bad, did not hold them out to ridicule or the legal word they used to use with obloquy, you know,

people really thinking worse of you for it. So the combination of some of the language being opinion, some of the language not even really being quite about Sandman, and some of it being not so bad is what led the court to rule. as it did. So you weren't surprised, it sounds like, by this ruling at all. No. I mean, I always thought that while the treatment of Sandman wasn't fair, I mean, he was characterized as really doing sort of outrageous things, his attitude sort of was characterized as

outrageous. But when you sort of parse it out, or at least as the court, parsed it out and said, well, no, let's just go through this word by word about what you said, he said. And as you pointed out earlier, there were different entities being sued for saying different things. That's why the opinion had to go through sort of issue by issue. Just what did you say? and what did you not say, et cetera? But, look, taken as a whole, it is a significant victory. And it's not a victory based on the great case of New York Times against Sullivan. It's not a First Amendment victory, which is the sort that our Supreme Court might one of these days.

limit protection for. These are all well-established common law. Common law, we've been part of the law through the years in the development of libel law. I mean, if what you say isn't really about the person, there's no libel suit. If what you say is simply a characterization, even an unfavorable one,

we're allowed to think ill, and speak ill of people as long as we're not lying and not saying false statements of fact about them. And of course, there never could be liability under libel law if what you're talking about wasn't the person who's suing. I mean, if you're giving the background, if you're talking about other bad things that have happened as a sort of or been said as an introduction. to what is said about him, no, that's not the basis of libel litigation. So while I don't think anyone would doubt that Sandman had, you know, good grounds to feel abused, to feel mistreated, to feel it really wasn't fair because he hadn't really done anything wrong, nonetheless, this is one of those cases which raises harder than you'd

think questions in libel law, and that now we have all these claims by these other entities being thrown out. Just one more thought on that. It sometimes is dangerous from the point of view of a plaintiff suing to really start suing everybody who said almost anything about you because, well, it has the possibility of giving you access to more pocketbooks if you win the case or if people are ready to settle. It also can give a judge the impression that, you know, you really weren't all hurt that much. All you really weren't. All you really really interested in is trying to come up with as much money as you can from as many people or institutions as possible.

So that's, yeah. Yeah. And his lawyer, Todd McMurtry said he's disappointed, but will be appealing, but we know how sometimes these appeals can go. Let's, if we could move on now to another case involving Elon Musk. And there was a Wall Street Journal report over the weekend that claimed that Elon Musk had an affair with a woman named Nicole Shanahan, who is the ex-wife of Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder. Nicole Shanahan has since come out and said this was not true.

Elon Musk said it's not true. They did not have this affair. The Wall Street Journal stands by its reporting. Elon Musk actually tweeted on Tuesday, or actually on Wednesday, I should say, that, you know, he's a public figure. He couldn't win this case, but maybe Nicole Shanahan could. and he hopes that she sues the Wall Street Journal. Your thoughts on his claim that this isn't true.

He's a public figure. He couldn't win, but maybe she could. He's not wrong. He's becoming an expert on libel law. He's not wrong. Certainly that he's a public figure. Is there any argument that she's a public figure, presumably, not, you know, on anything she's done. I mean, sometimes someone really close and someone's

family, you know, the first lady, you know, people become public figures because of who they're married to. But this does not sound like that. To me, almost the interesting issue is that, you know, libel law changes in terms of what is defamatory. as our standards of human behavior change. You know, some behavior of men and women with each other, which once would have thought to be scandalous, are now rather matter of fact. That said, saying that a married woman had an affair

or had sex at least with a person not her husband, would generally, I would say, around the country still be viewed as defamatory, holding her up to adverse public scrutiny. And so if that's correct, then Musk may be right. He's certainly right in saying she has a better claim than he does. you know he might be right in saying she might have a libel suit now remember anybody who brings the libel suit opens up everything about themselves right it all comes out yeah you know I know nothing of her so I speak very freely but a lot of people have some secrets in their

which they'd rather not have to testify about in court I mean I I could see, you know, a lawyer, again, I know nothing of her life, just saying a lawyer in a case in which someone in her position was saying he falsely accused me of engaging in sexual conduct with him at the same time I was married would say, make me a list of everybody, every man you've ever been alone with in the last blank years. or, you know, we've heard that you and so-and-so have been very friendly through the years. And, you know, these cases build on themselves sometime. And people who bring libel suits have to understand that their whole history, the way they behave, becomes center stage. And, you know, it's, well, One has to make a very serious decision, even if something that was said was not true.

Well, we thank you so much, Mr. Abrams, Floyd Abrams, First Amendment legend, for coming on to talk with us about these two cases. We really appreciate your time and your expertise, as always. Thanks a lot. I wish you and your audience well. Thank you so much. Okay, I have to jump off here. I really, I'm so sorry about the issues. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Bye-bye. Bye. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. It is produced by Sam Goldberg and Michael Dininger. Bobby Zoki is our YouTube manager. Alyssa Fisher handles our bookings

and Kiera Bronson handles all of our social media. You can listen to Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and YouTube. You can watch it there as well. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy and we will see you next time.

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