Blake Lively’s Texas Drop ‘Em Moves Reveal Larger ‘It Ends With Us’ Trial Strategy For Next Year – Deadline
By Dominic Patten Executive Editor, Legal, Labor & Politics
EXCLUSIVE: Blake Lively is heading to SXSW next month in Austin for the debut of Another Simple Favor, but the actress’ lawyers are exiting Texas when it comes to her and Ryan Reynolds‘ multifarious showdown with Justin Baldoni and his publicists over alleged sexual harassment during the making of It Ends With Us and the acerbic astroturfing that followed.
Less than two weeks after Lively’s team filed paperwork in the Lone Star state’s Hays County “to take a pre-suit deposition of Jed Wallace,” attorneys at Austin firm Haynes Boone LLP suddenly yanked the request out of the courts. A “notice of non-suit/dismissal” was placed in the Texas court docket Tuesday over talking to Street Relations crisis management boss and self-described “hired gun” Wallace.
However, just one day after the first actual court hearing in the now only six-week-old $400 million and counting Lively vs Baldoni face-off, the potentially pivotal role of Jed Wallace in all this celebrity dust-up that has caught Hollywood, America and the world’s attention is far from out of the spotlight. In fact, it could become a big part of the trial currently set to start on March 9, 2026 in New York City.
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RELATED: Blake Lively’s Lawyers Won’t Let Bryan Freedman Take Actress’ Deposition In Sexual Harassment & Smear Campaign Case Against Justin Baldoni
Clearly far lesser known than IEWU star/director Baldoni and the likes of the Wayfarer Studios founder’s hard hitting publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, online subcontractor Wallace is nonetheless a fundamental player in Lively and Reynolds’ claims that a smear campaign was orchestrated against the actress to preempt anticipated attacks on Baldoni and what went down on domestic violence film IEWU from the power couple.
Based out of Dripping Springs, TX, Wallace and his Street Relations company were allegedly hired so they could “weaponize a digital army around the country, including in New York and Los Angeles, to create, seed, manipulate, and advance disparaging content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums,” the initial January 21 filing proclaims.
RELATED: Blake Lively & Ryan Reynolds Aim To Have Justin Baldoni’s $400M Defamation Suit Tossed Out
At this point that’s all bats under Austin’s Congress Bridge with the dismissal of the deposition request.
Interestingly, Wallace is a defendant in Lively’s December 20 sexual harassment and retaliation complaint with California’s Civil Rights department that made the dispute over the Sony released IEWU public. Adding to the nearly half a dozen lawsuits in the IEWU blast radius already, Wallace and his Street Relations shingle are planning to file their own defamation suit against Lively, I’m told. Also, interestingly, the notice today by Lively’s team in Hays County is “without prejudice,” which means it could be refiled.
Refiled in another jurisdiction possibly, or added to an already existing case perhaps?
RELATED: “I F*cked Up”: Justin Baldoni Tells Blake Lively In Late-Night 2023 VM
As Baldoni’s Bryan Freedman-led legal team this past weekend added the New York Times as a defendant to the now consolidated Baldoni suit and Lively/Reynolds counterclaims and dropped the $250 million individual West Coast case against the Gray Lady, it seems that Wallace will be added to the case against Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, its CEO, financier and flacks Nathan and Abel.
Without naming names, Lively main lawyer Micheal Gottlieb said as much in Judge Lewis J. Liman’s federal courtroom in NYC on February 3, promising an amended complaint of his own and new defendants.
Now, no one from the Lively/Reynolds a.k.a. Ladypool side responded to Deadline’s request for comment on the dismissal of the Wallace deposition in Texas. Yet, it is almost certain the Freedman-repped Wallace, who once advertised himself in now deleted posts as having a “proprietary formula for defining artists and trends,” will be added to the larger case and placed at the center of the mix in the Manhattan case.
It should be stated that almost from the jump since this all went public last month, Nathan and Abel, and their attorneys have denied any such smear campaign against Lively was ever activated by them for Baldoni. Admitting such a plan was discussed and sketched out, their argument has been they never had to light the fuse because anti-Lively sentiment roared up organically online last summer. Lively’s side has said that she was targeted and not only digitally attacked and tainted, but saw a product line dramatically derailed because of the campaign.
It should also be noted that Hiltzik Strategies, where Nathan was at the time, was engaged by Johnny Depp in 2021 and 2022.
That period saw the Pirates of the Caribbean star going after his ex-wife Amber Heard in a $50 million defamation case after she implied domestic abuse in the marriage in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed. Up against the claims, which had come up in the couple’s bitter but quick divorce in 2016, as well as other less than flattering allegations, Depp eventually proved successful at trial in Virginia, as a vitriolic social media campaign was waged against Aquaman star Heard. “Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on,’” Heard said on December 23 after Lively took her accusations against Baldoni public. “I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”
Like almost every filing in this dirty business of show business matter, there were a lot of references to text messages, cherry picked as they are. In the filing for Wallace’s deposition, one particular apparent chain correspondence of August 10, 2024 states” “we’ve also started to see a shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team’s efforts to shift the narrative towards shining a spotlight on Blake and Ryan.”
The verified petition last month from Lively requesting Wallace’s deposition went on to say:
Petitioner additionally seeks testimony from Mr. Wallace regarding his knowledge of the underlying purpose of the work performed in connection with this engagement, particularly regarding the conduct by Respondent and any agents to manipulate social media sites, the tabloid media, and other coverage in favor of Mr. Baldoni and against Petitioner, to retaliate against and disparage Petitioner, and to undermine and breach Petitioner’s contracts with Wayfarer and It Ends With Us Movie LLC.
Don’t be shocked if you see similar language and a new defendant of Jed Wallace in an amended complaint from Lively and Reynolds in federal court in New York very soon. Don’t be shocked if there’s more. There may, I’m told, be other new defendants added too.Get our Breaking News Alerts and Keep your inbox happy.Signup for Breaking News Alerts & Newsletters
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Source: http://deadline.com/2025/02/blake-lively-trial-strategy-justin-baldoni-1236278393/
