Here’s a causal inference problem: where did the estimate of $64 million come from in “Blake Lively Says She Suffered $64 Million Financial Fallout From Justin Baldoni Conflict . . .”?

OK, here’s a causal inference problem for ya:

Blake Lively Says She Suffered $64 Million Financial Fallout From Justin Baldoni Conflict . . . In Lively’s memorandum in opposition to Wayfarer Studios’ motion in limine filed April 17, her expert Dr. Ashlee Humphreys–a professor of marketing communications at Northwestern University–alleged Baldoni’s use of “the retaliatory phrases ‘tone deaf,’ ‘bully,’ and ‘mean girl'” during the alleged smear campaign against her had amounted to “176,738,781 impressions, in an amount of approximately $36.5 to $40.5 million.” The filing also alleged that “retaliatory statements” made by the It Ends With Us director’s attorney Bryan Freedman during the legal battle had amounted to “116,959,530 impressions, in an amount calculated at $24,375,267.”

They continue:

Lively’s expert Humphreys had provided the calculation for reputational harm damages by quantifying the reach of the alleged phrases and statements, identifying “the number of impressions providing the basis for each” and calculating “particular dollar damages.”

I’m curious how the expert computed these dollar effects. I did some googling but couldn’t find the report with the numbers, so all I can do is speculate. Let’s do some divisions:

> c(36.5, 40.5)/176.738781
[1] 0.2065195 0.2291517
> 24.375267/116.959530
[1] 0.2084077

So, something like 20 cents per impression? I wonder where that came from. Maybe they did some sort of regression analysis estimating the effect of negative impressions on celebrities’ Q scores, and then attributed that to Lively not getting some roles that could have been worth $40 million and $25 million? The only thing is, the fact that both ratios are close to the same number suggests that they’re doing a straight-up calculation assigning a dollar cost per impression, but that can’t be right, as ultimately it has to result in foregone income, no? Also I don’t get why one of the estimates is a single number calculated to the nearest dollar value and the other is a range of round numbers. Also, once you have a range, I’m surprised it’s so narrow. Where does “approximately $36.5 to $40.5 million” come from? Why not “$25 to $50 million”?

If anyone has a copy of this expert report and would like to leak it to me . . . you have my email!

No joke–I’d like to see the analysis they did to justify their numbers. I’m not saying their estimated damages are wrong; Blake Lively is a big movie star, and her lifetime earnings could be huge. I’m just interested in the methodology here.

P.S. We’ve been assured by an expert from the National Academy of Sciences that scientific citations are worth $100,000 each. So now we can convert that to social media impressions (500,000 impressions = 1 citations) as well as more traditional cost benchmarks such as Jamaican beef patties, publications in Nature Communications, naming rights for a center for junk science, and, of course, attendance at a conference featuring Grover Norquist, Gray Davis, and a rabbi.