{"id":95969,"date":"2025-08-20T04:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T04:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/95969\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T04:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T04:38:07","slug":"justin-baldoni-says-blake-lively-trying-to-constitutionally-repress-his-lawyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/95969\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Baldoni Says Blake Lively Trying To Constitutionally Repress His Lawyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt doesn\u2019t seem much like the languid dog days of summer for Justin Baldoni<\/a> when it comes to the It Ends With Us director\u2019s sprawling legal fracas with Blake Lively<\/a> over her claims of sexual harassment on the Sony released flick and the alleged online smear campaign that followed last year. <\/p>\n

\n\tWith the brouhaha of earlier this month over Lively\u2019s (now very much sealed) deposition <\/a>being partially leaked and placed on the court docket finally dying down and Baldoni\u2019s Wayfarer Studios battle with various insurance companies over funds to pay legal fees<\/a> still very much heating up, the former Jane the Virgin actor this week has come out swinging for his main lawyer and against accusations of harassment of a different sort from another IEWU actress.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMs. Lively\u2019s post-litigation conduct has done nothing to endear her to the public, the press or \u2018content creators,’\u201d Wayfarer attorney Kevin Fritz proclaims in an August 18 opposition filing <\/a>to Lively\u2019s motion for sanctions against sharp and sometimes silver tongued Baldoni top lawyer Bryan Freedman<\/a>. \u201cA recent barrage of subpoenas has angered and alienated those already critical of Ms. Lively, forcing a number of them to seek this Court\u2019s intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, with an impressive number of Deadline posts on the legal saga that started when Lively filed a complaint over Baldoni\u2019s alleged misconduct with the California Civil Rights Department, the Meister Seelig & Fein partner goes to town, with some help from Liner Freedman Taitelman + Cooley\u2019s Ellyn S. Garofalo. A few weeks back, Lively\u2019s legal team asked Judge Lewis Liman once again to step in and impose sanctions on Freedman due to what they call the West LA litigator\u2019s ongoing \u201cpublicly slandering\u201d of their high profile client as this high profile case heads to trial in federal court in March 2026 (unless they all put their swords down and settle \u2014 unlikely). <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Blake<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBlake Lively & Justin Baldoni during the filming of It Ends With Us<\/a> (Credit: Sony) <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNicole Rivelli \/ Jojo Whilden \/ Sony Pictures Releasing \/ courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBlissfully tone deaf to her own conduct, Ms. Lively is not only unwilling to accept that her own celebrity and actions have generated the media frenzy she now complains of and the weight of negative publicity against her,\u201d Fritz states in a request to see the wide ranging sanctions and the motion for them tossed out. \u201cShe conveniently ignores that she and her counsel have been less than shy about publicly bashing Mr. Freedman and the Wayfarer Defendants in the press. Nevertheless, Ms. Lively seeks monetary sanctions, attorneys\u2019 fees, a reprimand and revocation of Mr. Freedman\u2019s pro hac vice admission for statements primarily relating to whether Ms. Lively would appear at deposition and the falsity of her claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHaving seen his own $400 million countersuit<\/a> against Lively, Ryan Reynolds<\/a>, their publicist and the New York Times kicked to the curb in June, Baldoni and his Wayfarer crew are now awaiting Judge Liman\u2019s decision on Freedman\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n

\n\tToday, Lively saw some movement on her issue over Team Baldoni apparently not giving her team post-December 2024 documents sought in discovery and Team Baldoni got an extra 48 hours of sorts. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Wayfarer Parties respond that only certain production requests relate to the alleged ongoing smear campaign, which Lively has cited as the basis for seeking discovery postdating December 2024, Judge Liman wrote in a short-ish order Tuesdsy. \u201cIn her reply memorandum of law, Lively provides a specific list of requests for which she seeks documents through the present. The Wayfarer Parties have not had an opportunity to respond to that filing. They are therefore permitted until August 21, 2025, to file a two-page letter brief addressing the extent to which discovery \u201cthrough the present\u201d is or is not appropriate for the specific requests.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat the Wayfarer Parties have had a change to respond to and certainly have responded to is It Ends With Us actress Isabela Ferrer\u2019s accusations that Baldoni and team have been trying to \u201charass\u201d her and \u00a0\u201cengaged in bad faith tactics\u201d over a subpoena\u00a0related, no surprise, to the Lively case. <\/p>\n

\n\tLawyers for Ferrer, who played the younger version of pal Lively\u2019s Lily Bloom character in IEWU, said in an August 17 filing <\/a>that they objected to Baldoni\u2019s team\u2019s desire to be permitted to \u201cserve her by alternative means,\u201d after several unsuccessful and self-described \u201cdiligent\u201d attempts. In fact, lawyers for Ferrer, who assumed her legal costs would be covered by the production under her contract, don\u2019t like the subpoena at all. \u201cBaldoni made no effort to tailor the subpoena towards the production of new or different materials, demonstrating that the real aim of the Baldoni Subpoena, as well as the pending Motion, is to harass Ms. Ferrer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMonday, Baldoni\u2019s team took just a day to swing back with a letter of their own \u2013<\/a> with Lively as exhibit 1:<\/p>\n

It was not the Wayfarer Parties who first subpoenaed Ms. Ferrer \u2013 it was Ms. Lively, and (again) Mr. Michelman appears to have accepted service of her Subpoena without objection. Ms. Lively should not be permitted to obtain discovery from Ms. Ferrer, while Ms. Ferrer and her counsel frustrate all effort by the Wayfarer Parties to obtain the discovery critical to the preparation of their defense. Given the circumstances, the Wayfarer Parties are willing to stipulate that none of the parties will use any communication to, from or concerning Ms. Ferrer, or any testimony from her, in any manner in this action. That stipulation will satisfy Ms. Ferrer\u2019s apparent desire to avoid involvement in the litigation and trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat the outcome of that dispute is remains as of tonight TBD \u2013 like so much of this case. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It doesn\u2019t seem much like the languid dog days of summer for Justin Baldoni when it comes to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[8678,44291,88,44292,8680,44293,8985,4915],"class_list":{"0":"post-95969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-blake-lively","9":"tag-bryan-freedman","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-it-ends-with-us","12":"tag-justin-baldoni","13":"tag-lively-baldoni","14":"tag-ryan-reynolds","15":"tag-taylor-swift"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}