Alec Baldwin won a round in court against the fallen Marine family suing him for $25 million for defamation and other claims. A federal judge in Wyoming granted Baldwin’s motion to dismiss for jurisdiction— but without prejudice.

This is only a partial victory because Baldwin’s lawyers filed to dismiss all causes of action as invalid and the court split the difference.

Catch up: You read exclusively here three weeks ago that Baldwin’s motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction was likely to succeed. The attorney for the Gold Star McCollum family told me that if the judge grants Baldwin’s motion on jurisdiction alone, his clients will not not give up their lawsuit.

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Note to paid subscribers: The judge’s order granting Alec Baldwin’s motion to dismiss for jurisdiction is uploaded at the bottom for you to read.

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The attorney for the widow and sisters of Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum told me exclusively that they will refile the lawsuit where Baldwin lives and works, which means New York or California.

“While we disagree with the court’s jurisdictional analysis, the court did not grant Alec Baldwin any relief on the claims my clients asserted,” McCollum family attorney Dennis Postiglione said. “My clients plan on refiling this lawsuit in the proper jurisdiction.”

Baldwin’s lawyer Luke Nikas did not respond to my request for comment.

The lawsuit came after Baldwin called McCollum’s sister an “insurrectionist” because she attended the Jan. 6, 2021 rally in Washington, D.C. The 64-year-old actor posted the 24-year-old’s post to his millions of Instagram followers and said “good luck.”

U.S. District Judge Nancy D. Freudenthal, who was nominated by Pres. Barrack Obama, wrote in her ruling:

The fact that Mr. Baldwin placed content on his own Instagram feed from New York – that his 2.4 million followers could access world-wide – also does not subject Mr. Baldwin to jurisdiction in Wyoming.

….the allegations that Mr. Baldwin was aware that his followers are sympathetic to his political affiliation that they are more likely to be politically active and opinionated, that he fueled the firestorm of hatred from his followers, and did nothing to remedy what he had started, also are not intentional actions by Mr. Baldwin that were expressly aimed at Wyoming.

Nancy Freudenthal (Photo by Michele Rushworth)

Marine Rylee McCollum was killed in the Kabul airport bombing in Afghanistan in Aug. 2021. Baldwin sent $5,000 for the GoFundMe set up to help widow Gigi raise her daughter Levi who was born in October. Gigi, along with sisters Cheyenne and Roice, sued Baldwin in Jan. 2022 — my exclusive here.

The McCollums allege in the lawsuit that after Baldwin put Roice’s Instagram post on his own account, they all have been “receiving hateful messages and even death threats from Baldwin’s followers who had seen the posts.”

The judge did not address the claims by the McCollums:

Because the Court’s decision is limited to personal jurisdiction, there is no need to address the multitude of allegations, claims and arguments from the complaint or the briefing.

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The young McCollum women are not in a fair fight against Baldwin’s high-priced, legal team. But they have told me many times that they are pursuing this lawsuit against Baldwin for the principles of treating others with respect and dignity and basic decency.

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