Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are preparing for a lengthy legal battle with Justin Baldoni, but before that, the pair will look to have things end in dismissal.
According to a recent letter from Lively and Reynolds’ attorney Michael Gottlieb (via Deadline), the Lively-Reynolds party intends to try and move forward with a dismissal request, and see Baldoni’s lawsuit thrown out.
“The Lively-Reynolds Parties intend to move to dismiss Plaintiffs’ complaint,” said a letter Thursday from attorney Michael Gottlieb Judge Lewis Liman.
Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s lawyer and someone who Lively and Reynolds have been butting heads with recently, responded to the news, calling it nothing but an attempt by the married couple to “delay the discovery” of hundreds of pages of information.
“All these motions to dismiss are just yet another attempt by Ms. Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Leslie Sloan to hide and delay the discovery of the hundreds of pages of true facts and well-documented information that we remain dedicated to providing publicly, with full transparency,” the lawyer told Deadline Thursday, with reference to material he and others on Team Baldoni have made public so far and a threatened website Freedman as said he will put up online. “We expect such motions to be denied and, in the meantime, stand ready to oppose each and every one of them.”
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.”
(Source: Deadline)
