Lizzo Wins: Is the Truth Selective?

Becca HartwellOkay, so picture this. Same star, same summer, two federal lawsuits, and by Labor Day, one of them is just gone.

MilesTossed. Dismissed. A judge looked at it and said, "Nope."

Becca HartwellRight. But the other one, still standing, still headed to trial. This is Star Witness. I'm Becca Hartwell, that's Miles, and we've got a genuine legal split screen for you today.

MilesA judge ruling one Lizzo lawsuit doesn't hold up, while a completely separate one against her touring company survives.

Becca HartwellSame defendant, basically the same summer of headlines, wildly different outcomes.

MilesWhich is the part that gets me. If the allegations sound similar from a distance, why does the paperwork treat them like they're from different planets?

Becca HartwellThat's question number one. Why did the first case fall apart?

MilesAnd question two, what's actually different about the case that didn't?

Becca HartwellWe're not answering either yet.

MilesNot yet.

Becca HartwellBut I will say, when you actually read what the judge wrote, not the headlines, the reasoning, it's kind of a masterclass in how a courtroom decides what counts as real harm.

MilesVersus what a lawyer might call just a bad day at work.

Becca HartwellExactly, and that phrase alone is going to make some people furious.

MilesStick with us, because the paperwork's about to get very specific.

Becca HartwellLet's get into what actually landed on that judge's desk. Okay, so the headline everyone's screaming about, dismissed. September 1st, gone.

MilesA federal judge tossed the entire wardrobe stylist lawsuit against Lizzo's touring company that same day.

Becca HartwellAnd I already have so many questions.

MilesBillboard framed it as a win for Lizzo over harassment and discrimination claims. A woman on the tour said she faced racism and bullying.

Becca HartwellThat's Asha Daniels, wardrobe designer. As of September 1st, she's out of court.

MilesCompletely out, and TMZ's version was almost gleeful about it, like Lizzo's finally getting to say, "It's about damn time," because the judge threw out what was left of the complaint against her Big Grrrl, Big touring company.

Becca HartwellIt's about damn time. I felt that all the way through my headphones.

MilesRight? It's TMZ. Of course it's dripping in attitude.

Becca HartwellWhat was left? Miles, that phrase is doing a lot of work.

MilesIt is, because this wasn't one clean, dramatic collapse in a single afternoon. Pieces of that case were already gone before September even started.

Becca HartwellWait, gone how early?

MilesWe'll get into the specifics, but some of it had already thinned out well before this ruling landed.

Becca HartwellOkay, that's driving me a little crazy, but fine, hold that thought.

MilesHold it, because there's a but that matters more right now.

Becca HartwellGo.

MilesThat same summer, three former backup dancers filed their own completely separate lawsuit.

Becca HartwellAnd theirs didn't get tossed.

MilesNope. It's distinct from the stylist's case entirely, and it's still heading toward trial.

Becca HartwellSo one lawsuit is dead in the water, and the other one's walking straight into a courtroom.

MilesSame star, same summer. The word harassment sitting in both complaints.

Becca HartwellAnd a judge looked at them and treated them like they weren't even in the same universe.

MilesThey weren't, legally speaking.

Becca HartwellCool. Cool, cool, cool. Very normal.

MilesIt gets less random once you see the paperwork, I promise.

Becca HartwellI need to sit down.

MilesTake a seat, because we're gonna be here a while.

Becca HartwellRude, but fair.

MilesThat's the puzzle sitting in front of us. It's not about who we believe, it's about what actually survives a motion to dismiss in federal court.

Becca HartwellOkay, that right there is the whole hook of this episode. Same year, same target, and the legal system just picked one to live.

MilesTo get there, though, we've gotta go back to where the stylist's case actually started. Because on paper, it didn't open as this narrow little thing that was destined to die.

Becca HartwellOoh, take me there.

MilesIt started out a lot bigger than whatever the judge saw sitting on the docket September 1st.

Becca HartwellBigger how?

MilesThat's exactly where we're headed.

Becca HartwellSo before we even get to September, there's this quiet moment back in 2024 that most people scrolled right past.

MilesRight, because it wasn't the headline. It was a judge, and Aenlle-Rocha just trimming the case down.

Becca HartwellTrimming how?

MilesHe dropped Lizzo herself from the stylist's suit. Not the whole case, just her personally as a defendant.

Becca HartwellSo she was never even a named party for most of this?

MilesNot since 2024. Because on paper, the employer wasn't Lizzo, it was her touring company and her payroll company.

Becca HartwellThat feels like a technicality.

MilesIt's not nothing, though. In employment law, who signs your checks and who's on your call sheet actually decides who can get sued.

Becca HartwellSo Daniels was suing the machine, not the person.

MilesExactly, and that structure, LLC handles payroll, another entity handles the tour, that's standard across the industry. Doesn't mean anything shady, it's just how big tours get built.

Becca HartwellBut it does mean the star herself gets a legal buffer.

MilesA real one, even if the allegations are about things that happened around her on her tour in her orbit.

Becca HartwellOkay, and get this, that's the exact structure that was still standing when the rest of the case got thrown out.

MilesRight, because dropping Lizzo in 2024 didn't kill the lawsuit. The company was still a defendant. The claims against the company kept moving.

Becca HartwellUntil September.

MilesUntil September, when the remaining harassment and discrimination claims, the ones Daniels brought as the former tour wardrobe designer, got wiped out entirely.

Becca HartwellSo two different exits. Lizzo exits in '24 as a defendant. The case itself exits in September.

MilesTwo separate doors, same hallway.

Becca HartwellI like that Okay, but here's what's bugging me. If the company survived 2024 as a defendant, something in the actual claims had to fail later. It's not just paperwork.

MilesNo, it's not. Something about the substance of what she alleged didn't hold up under the standard the judge was applying.

Becca HartwellWhich is where I wanna go next, because I pulled the actual language from the ruling.

MilesThe ordinary tribulations line?

Becca HartwellThat's the one. I wanna read exactly what he wrote, because the wording is doing a lot of work.

MilesGo.

Becca HartwellOkay, so I actually pulled the ruling, and Judge Aenlle-Rocha's own words are almost funny in how dry they are. He writes that what Daniels described falls within, quote, "The ordinary tribulations of the workplace."

MilesOrdinary tribulations. That's judge-speak for bad boss, not illegal boss.

Becca HartwellBasically. He's saying rude, uncomfortable, even humiliating doesn't automatically clear the bar for a harassment claim under the law.

MilesWhich is a pretty high bar if you're the one living it.

Becca HartwellRight. And it's not the only thing he tossed. In that same opinion, he goes claim by claim. The racial slur allegation, gone. The lewd gesture allegation, gone. Even her ADA disability claim over an ankle injury, gone.

MilesWait, four separate things all in one ruling?

Becca HartwellAll in one ruling. He didn't just say the harassment case was weak. He went through the whole complaint piece by piece and knocked each piece down.

MilesThat's not a partial loss. That's a clean sweep.

Becca HartwellAnd Daniels' side did not take it quietly.

MilesI'd hope not.

Becca HartwellHer attorney, Ron Zambrano, put out a statement objecting on the record. He says the judge improperly weighed evidence that should've been evaluated by a jury.

MilesThat's a real accusation to make about a federal judge.

Becca HartwellIt is. He's essentially saying, "You didn't just apply the law. You made a factual call that a jury should've made."

MilesSpecifically on what?

Becca HartwellSpecifically, he disputes the ADA finding, the ankle injury piece. He thinks the judge decided on paper that it wasn't serious enough, when that's a question for 12 people, not one person on a bench.

MilesOkay, but judges get to do that at this stage. That's literally what a motion to dismiss is for, deciding if there's even enough here to go to a jury.

Becca HartwellSure, and this judge decided there wasn't. Every claim, every angle dismissed before a single juror ever heard her name.

MilesSo Daniels' whole case dies on paper.

Becca HartwellOn paper. No trial, no jury, no cross-examination of Lizzo's team under oath, just a written opinion saying none of it was enough.

MilesAnd to be clear, that's not unusual for a motion to dismiss. It's a paper stage, not a fact-finding stage.

Becca HartwellRight. The question the judge answers isn't, did this happen? It's if everything she said is true, is it still not enough? Which is a lower bar for the defense to clear than most people realize.

MilesSo if a slur allegation and an ADA claim and a harassment claim can all get wiped out this fast on this little-

Becca HartwellAnd why are three backup dancers still walking toward an actual trial with the exact same company?

MilesThat's what I wanna know, because if this is the bar, somebody cleared it.

Becca HartwellSomebody did, and it's not the same somebody. So the company beat the stylist's claims outright. The dancers' suit is a completely different animal. Three women, Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams, and Noelle Rodriguez, filed back in 2023. Wait, before the September ruling even happened?

MilesWay before. That case has been sitting on the docket for two years while the stylist suit came and went in a fraction of the time.

Becca HartwellOkay, so two totally separate timelines colliding this summer. That's a lot to track.

MilesIt gets narrower, actually. Hoodline reported the fat-shaming allegations and the dancers' complaint got trimmed back in December of last year.

Becca HartwellTrimmed how? Like, the judge tossed pieces of it the way he tossed Daniels' whole case?

MilesSome pieces, yeah, but not the core harassment allegations. Those survive. The case is still headed to trial.

Becca HartwellSo one lawsuit gets a haircut and lives. The other gets the guillotine.

MilesSure, if you want it that dramatic.

Becca HartwellI always want it that dramatic, Miles. You know this about me.

MilesMeanwhile, Lizzo herself isn't hiding from any of it. She sat down with Gayle King on CBS Mornings.

Becca HartwellOh, I remember clips of this floating around.

MilesShe told King flat out she's not settling. Her words were, quote, "I'm fighting the case because I know that it's not true."

Becca HartwellWait. Say that again. That's not the usual publicist-approved non-answer.

MilesNope. Straight from her mouth, and she said she plans to testify herself.

Becca HartwellTestify? Not just a statement through a publicist. Actually get on a stand under oath?

MilesThat's what she told Gayle King. No settlement, no quiet arrangement to make it disappear.

Becca HartwellWhich is a choice. You settle the stylist thing quietly, you'd never hear about it.

MilesRight, but there was nothing to settle there. The judge threw it out before it ever got that far.

Becca HartwellTrue. So put the two pictures side by side for me. One case, the company loses its star defendant, then loses the whole thing on paper. The other keeps the star as a witness and keeps walking toward a jury.

MilesAnd that's really the split this whole episode's been circling. Procedurally, thin claims die at the motion stage. Specific sustained allegations from multiple plaintiffs don't.

Becca HartwellSo it's not one lawsuit being believed and one being disbelieved.

MilesIt's one lawsuit that could survive the legal test and one that couldn't.

Becca HartwellWhich is a very different sentence than the headlines are writing.

MilesMost headlines this week just said, "Lizzo wins again."

Becca HartwellRight, and none of them mentioned she's about to testify in the other case.

MilesBecause that story doesn't fit in a push notification.

Becca HartwellIt's also just a different kind of risk. Settling makes a problem quiet. Testifying puts you on the record under cross-examination for as long as the trial takes.

MilesWhich tells you something about how confident she is in that specific case, whatever you make of the underlying facts.

Becca HartwellNot confident enough to celebrate it yet, though. That statement is still in the future.

MilesRight. This is the case with no press release. The other one already got its victory lap.

Becca HartwellSo let's go there. How did she actually frame the win publicly, not settling one case while heading toward trial in the other? That's a specific kind of messaging.

MilesThat's exactly where this goes next.

Becca HartwellStraight to social media within hours of the ruling. Exactly how you'd guess.

MilesOf course she did.

Becca HartwellShe posted a statement, and the line everyone grabbed was, "The truth has prevailed."

MilesFor four dismissed claims, that's the phrase she went with?

Becca HartwellThat's the phrase, and it traveled, screenshotted, and reposted within hours. Same three words underneath every repost.

MilesPeople weren't quoting the ruling. They were quoting her caption.

Becca HartwellOne account just captioned it, "Lizzo celebrates," and ran those straight underneath.

MilesAnd the coverage around her statement leaned into something else, too. One outlet framed the whole piece around her saying she'd prayed for the truth.

Becca HartwellWhich is a specific way to describe winning a motion to dismiss.

MilesA federal judge granting a dismissal doesn't make her innocent in front of a jury. He ruled the claims didn't clear the legal bar.

Becca HartwellBut prayed for the truth reads like vindication, full stop, case closed.

MilesAnd that's the thing about a caption. It doesn't leave room for on these four specific claims under this specific legal standard. It just says the truth won.

Becca HartwellWhich most people will take at face value because why wouldn't you? You don't read the 15-page order. You read the 11-word post, and headlines run with whichever's shorter.

MilesMeanwhile, the other case, the one with three plaintiffs, gets zero victory lap. No statement, no post, nothing.

Becca HartwellBecause there's nothing to celebrate yet on that side. It hasn't resolved.

MilesRight, but that's the imbalance. One outcome gets broadcast everywhere as truth. The other just sits there unresolved, off camera.

Becca HartwellMost people scrolling past that post have no idea a second lawsuit even exists.

MilesWhich is really the tension running under this whole episode. Whose version of the truth gets the microphone?

Becca HartwellIt's such a clean soundbite, though. Three words, no room for footnotes.

MilesThat's the design. You don't caption a legal filing. You caption a feeling.

Becca HartwellIt's not even that she's lying about the dismissal. She's not. The order is real. The claims are gone. It's just that silence about the other case does a lot of quiet work, too.

MilesSilence is a strategy. It's just a different one than a press release.

Becca HartwellOne truth got a press release. The other's waiting on a jury.

MilesSo where do you actually land on this? What's your take?

Becca HartwellGive me one second. This is where my gut and my job disagree.

MilesThat's exactly why we're doing two takes.

Becca HartwellOkay, my actual verdict, the word win is doing way more work in these headlines than the order itself does.

MilesMeaning what?

Becca HartwellMeaning a judge tossed specific claims because of how they were pled and what evidence backed them. That's a narrow ruling. It's not a character reference.

MilesSure, but nobody reads Ninth Circuit standards for fun.

Becca HartwellNo. They read Lizzo wins and move on with their day.

MilesRight.

Becca HartwellAnd that gap between what the order actually says and what the headline lets people assume, that's the part that bugs me.

MilesMy verdict is a little colder than that.

Becca HartwellGo.

MilesThe dancer's case didn't just survive by accident. It got past scrutiny while the stylist didn't. Different facts, different outcome, and I think that difference is the actual story here, not the applause.

Becca HartwellSo you're saying the celebration's misapplied?

MilesI'm saying whatever vindication exists belongs to one case, not the whole picture.

Becca HartwellSo concretely, if the dancer's case had the same thin factual record as the stylist, you think it gets dismissed, too?

MilesAlmost certainly at the motion stage, yeah. It's not about who's more sympathetic. It's about whether the specific pled facts clear the bar.

Becca HartwellUgh, which is annoyingly reasonable of you.

MilesI have my moments.

Becca HartwellWhere does that leave us factually tonight?

MilesAs of what we've reviewed, the stylist's case is done, dismissed. The dancer's case is still moving towards trial.

Becca HartwellTwo separate tracks, two separate results running at the same time.

MilesOne closed file, one open one.

Becca HartwellAnd that open one is going to be the story that actually tests all this, not a motion, an actual courtroom, actual testimony.

MilesWhich is a very different kind of pressure than a dismissal order.

Becca HartwellYeah.

MilesWe're not going to get that resolved tonight, obviously.

Becca HartwellObviously, but it's the thing worth watching once trial dates start landing on calendars.

MilesWe'll be tracking it.

Becca HartwellWe will. All right, Miles, that's where we're leaving it for now.

MilesOne case closed, one very much not, and a public narrative that's already moved on from both.

Becca HartwellWhich feels like exactly the kind of gap we'll be back in this chair arguing about again.

MilesNext week, different story, same instinct. Read past the headline.

Becca HartwellSame instinct, new mess.

MilesWe'll see you then.

Becca HartwellSo that's the case file, folks. Two lawsuits, one verdict each so far, and only one that's actually done.

MilesYeah, and the dancer's trial is the one to watch now. That's where this actually gets decided.

Becca HartwellMiles just wants an excuse to cover court dates for six more months.

MilesGuilty, but also genuinely, that's the story.

Becca HartwellBefore we go, if you've got a case you want us on, drop it in a review or tag us @StarWitnessPod on whatever app you've still open.

MilesWe read all of them. Well, Becca reads most of them.

Becca HartwellI read most of them.

MilesNew episode drops every Wednesday, so if you want the next verdict the second it lands, hit Subscribe now.

Becca HartwellDon't make us chase you down for it.

MilesShe will. She's done it.

Becca HartwellOne time. Okay, so before we let you go, here's what I keep coming back to. Public opinion moved on this in about a day. The actual legal process is going to take months more, maybe longer.

MilesAnd whichever one you trust says a lot about how you watch these stories.

Becca HartwellThat's genuinely the split, isn't it?

MilesIt is. All right, thanks for hanging out with us today.

Becca HartwellSee you Wednesday, everybody.