Sorry for the messed up post.
According to Marchi, judge said everything against her is dismissed.
Then why is she required to attend?
Jamie is required to attend mediation because she is still in legal jeopardy. The Judge was wise and humane including her in this order.
There are problems with the TCPA hearing that will likely be appealed. Appeals are expensive, take time, and present a burden to all parties.
One possible outcome of mediation is an agreement not to appeal. For Jamie, an appeal would be worse than if the causes were allowed to move forward.
On the one hand, there is a very real possibility an Appeals Court decides the Judge ruled in error. That would put her on the hook for all her original legal bills plus the cost of the appeals plus the cost to litigate. Her lawyer has been angling for a clean exit and an agreement would be an opportunity for exactly that.
On the other hand, appeals are very boring for the parties. All you do is write checks to lawyers while they argue about the nuances of law. Any time you ask your lawyer for a status, they give you a 30 minute speech and bill you for the time. There's this unpleasant sense of entropy that sets in where you feel like your life and future are purely in someone else's hands.
While this might sound cruel, psychology doesn't favor Jamie in an extended legal battle. She's old and getting older, her looks have faded, her personal means are modest, and her best days as a VA are behind her. Competition from younger talent means, at some point, she's sidelined to supporting roles. She may pursue writing and directing opportunities, but those are, again, are subject to competition. New corporate overlords mean she's not going to have some of the allies she's had in the past and one failure could put her out of the industry.
What Jamie has to gain from this lawsuit is feminist empowerment with limited upside. She doesn't have the personal cachet to sell a book about her life story and the Dallas Morning News doesn't pay for talking to their reporters. Plus there are still other parties to the case who may have an incentive to turn on her in a non-legal sense, which could cost her even a moral victory. She'd do well knowing what's on their minds.
This order for mediation would be a good time for a cost benefit comparison. The Judge didn't have to include her in the order, it really speaks to a kind of graciousness that he did. Maybe this gets her to think about her future a little bit and make some better decisions.