From Judge Edgardo Ramos's decision Tuesday in Jacob v. Lorenz (S.D.N.Y.) (the underlying allegedly libelous article appears to be the one here):
Plaintiffs Ariadna Jacob and her company, Influences, Inc., brought this defamation action against Defendants Taylor Lorenz and the New York Times. Plaintiffs allege that a New York Times article authored by Lorenz included several defamatory statements about Jacob….
[T]he Court granted in part and denied in part Defendants' motion to dismiss the second amended complaint … on June 21, 2023. The Court held that Plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged a claim with respect to one statement in the article suggesting that Jacob had leaked an individual's nude photographs. Defendants now move for reconsideration and ask the Court to dismiss the surviving claim based on that statement…. [T]he motion is DENIED….
[The] lone surviving statement—referred to here and in the Court's prior opinions as Statement 12—concerns Jacob's alleged distribution of nude photographs of influencer Devion Young.
On August 11, 2020, Lorenz emailed Jacob and her team with a list of details that she was "planning to report." That list included the assertion that "Ms. Jacob distributed illicit photos of Mr. Young to others (Note: we have screen recordings showing these messages)." Jacob's representative responded with a statement from Jacob's attorney that said: "Illicit photos of Mr. Young were brought to Ms. Jacob's attention. As Influences was working on multiple business transactions with Mr. Young, Ms. Jacob informed an internal consultant of the pictures [sic] existence, but at no point did she publicly 'leak' the photos, as Mr. Young has claimed."
