‘It Ends With Us’ Lawsuit: Judge Issues Mixed Ruling in Blake Lively’s Subpoena for 2 Years of Justin Baldoni Team’s Phone Records – Variety
By
Brent Lang
Executive Editor
A federal judge delivered a mixed ruling in the ongoing legal battle between Blake Lively and her “It Ends With Us” co-star and director Justin Baldoni, granting part of her subpoena for phone records, while shutting down certain requests that he deemed “overly intrusive and disproportionate to the needs of the case.”
Lively’s legal team had requested call and text logs between Baldoni, his PR team and other employees of Wayfarer Studios, the production company behind “It Ends With Us,” from Dec. 1, 2022, to the present. But Judge Lewis Liman wrote that even though Lively’s lawyers weren’t asking for the content of the calls or texts, “the phone records themselves would still contain sensitive information regarding which doctors, psychologists, or even acquaintances the Wayfarer Parties spoke to, and when.”
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Bryan Freedman, an attorney for Baldoni, praised the ruling in a statement, “The Court put a stop to Ms. Lively’s egregious attempt to invade our clients’ privacy. 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.”
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But Lively did prevail in certain respects. Judge Liman ruled that she can “more narrowly” tailor her requests for phone records and also wrote that Baldoni’s side had not demonstrated why Lively could not seek phone information related to people who were “non-parties” in the lawsuit.
“The Wayfarer Parties may assert a privacy interest in their own phone records, but they have notprovided any basis for asserting an interest in the communications of non-parties,” the judge wrote.
The legal fight between Lively and Baldoni has been one of the most bitterly contested clashes of high-profile actors in recent Hollywood history. Lively has accused Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of “It Ends With Us,” and claims that, after she objected to his behavior, he worked with his PR team to orchestrate an online smear campaign designed to ruin her reputation. At the same time, Baldoni is accusing Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, of making false allegations and trying to ruin his career. He has also sued the New York Times, which broke the story of Lively’s harassment allegations weeks before she filed a lawsuit.
Pat Saperstein contributed to this report.
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