Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni‘s lawyers are at it again. The two legal teams are now locked in battle over a new ruling from a judge in the pair’s ongoing dispute.
What are Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s lawyers arguing about?
According to a recent report from Deadline, a federal judge has denied a motion by Baldoni’s legal team to stop subpoenas that Lively’s team wanted to serve on AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and other phone carriers. The subpoenas would give Lively’s team access to more information about who was talking to whom about what in the months after It Ends With Us released, when Lively’s team alleges that Baldoni began enacting a smear campaign against Lively.
“Lively’s complaint already identifies many individuals who allegedly participated in a negative media campaign,” Judge Lewis J. Liman ruled on Friday. “Lively may make discovery requests tailored to those individuals,” the judicial older brother of director Doug Liman adds in a big but specific pathway for Lively and Ryan Reynolds in the case. “She is permitted to use the tools of discovery to identify the contact information or telephone numbers for those individuals.”
Lively’s team was quick to claim the decision as a victory, with a spokesperson sending in a statement to Deadline noting that “after promising to release all the ‘receipts, Freedman ran into court to keep secret the phone records of who Baldoni, Heath, Sarowitz, Nathan, Wallace and Abel were calling during their retaliatory campaign. So, instead of getting these records from the phone carriers the way we initially requested, the judge has ruled that if we simply submit more specific requests, we will be able to get the records we are seeking.”
Although Liman’s ruling is being hailed as a victory for Lively’s legal team, Baldoni’s group — led by Bryan Freeman — is also taking victory for the ruling, saying that Liman’s decision put a stop to Ms. Lively’s egregious attempt to invade our clients’ privacy,” Freeman said. “This is a big win. No matter how the Lively Parties may try to spin this decision, the Court saw their efforts for what they really are: a desperate fishing expedition intended to salvage their debunked claims long after they already savaged our clients’ reputations in the New York Times.”
Lively and Baldoni’s teams have gone back and forth over the better part of two months. Allegations range from Lively’s team alleging that Baldoni is trying to be disrespectful to sexual harassment victims, to reports of Lively having various “demands” for Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios partner Jamey Heath.
Lively’s initial complaint alleges that Baldoni created a hostile work environment
All of this stems from a formal complaint that Lively made against Baldoni in December. In it, she states that things got so bad during the filming of It Ends With Us that an all-hands-on-deck meeting was called in response to her claims of a hostile work environment. During the meeting, Lively asked that Baldoni stop showing her nude videos or images of women, that he stop mentioning his pornography addiction to her, that Baldoni stop discussing sexual experiences in front of her, and that he also stop mentioning Lively’s weight.
The complaint also claims that an agreement was made between production company Wayfarer Studios and the cast in which the promotion of the movie would focus “more on [Lively’s character’s] strength and resilience as opposed to describing the film as a story about domestic violence.” However, Lively claims that Baldoni would renege on that and instead spoke in interviews about the film’s serious story.
Lively also claimed that Baldoni and his PR manager, Melissa Nathan, discussed ways to start a social media campaign to harm her reputation. The filing by Lively includes 22 pages of texts between Baldoni’s publicist and Nathan, in which they discuss wanting to have Lively “buried.”
