A new development in the ongoing legal battle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni has taken place, with Lively’s legal team objecting to any potential deposition that Baldoni’s lawyers may ask of Lively.
According to a new letter from Justin Baldoni’s attorney Kevin Fritz (via Deadline), Lively’s legal team is objecting to Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman in a deposition of any kind.
“During a conference of the parties’ counsel on January 30, 2025, counsel for the Wayfarer Parties requested the earliest possible deposition of Blake Lively,” Fritz’s letter to Judge Lewis J. Liman reads. “Specifically, the Lively Parties’ counsel indicated that they object to Bryan J. Freedman, personally, taking Ms. Lively’s deposition, based upon unspecified statements made by Mr. Freedman. When asked to elaborate on the grounds for their objection, counsel for the Lively Parties declined to do so.
The letter goes to mention that there are no grounds or stipulations that would make this enforceable, however.
“Counsel for Ms. Lively has made clear that Ms. Lively does not want Mr. Freedman to be the attorney who takes her deposition,” Fritz added. “We are unaware of any situation that would warrant the deposed party to have a choice in which attorney takes her deposition. Parties to litigation simply do not have the right to dictate which of their opponents’ attorneys may or may not take their deposition or perform any other aspect of the opposing party’s case.”
Lively’s team has been bucking back against Freedman ever since videos of on-set activity on It Ends With Us were released by the lawyer, with Lively’s legal team arguing that Freedman has been trying to sway the public opinion.
Lively’s complaint alleges that Baldoni created a hostile work environment
The lawsuit stems from a formal complaint that Blake Lively made against Baldoni last month. 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.”
