Blake Lively suffered a small setback in court after a judge denied her effort to obtain communications sent by Justin Baldoni’s legal team to content creators or the press about her, Us Weekly can confirm.
On Monday, August 4, a New York federal judge ruled on the motion filed by Baldoni’s lawyer’s firm Liner Freedman Taitelman Cooley. Baldoni’s main lawyer, Bryan Freedman, is a partner at the firm.
Freedman’s law firm asked the court to shut down a subpoena Lively, 37, issued demanding they turn over communications and information regarding a variety of issues.
Lively sued Baldoni, 41, accusing him of sexual harassment on the set of their 2024 film, It Ends With Us. Baldoni denies the claims. The actress believes he hired a crisis PR team to smear her in the press in retaliation for her speaking up about his behavior. Baldoni denied he went after Lively publicly but did accuse her of seizing control of his film after production wrapped.
Lively believes Baldoni’s team may have used content creators to push negative narratives about her. Baldoni’s team argued the negative press was organic and not an orchestrated plan against Lively.
In the recent order, the judge noted, “Lively alleges that the goal of the campaign was to spread disparaging content about her on social media and in the press.”
The judge noted that Lively also alleges that defendants “continued to perpetrate the untraceable digital campaign and have continued to ‘push negative and derogatory content about” her.
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The order read, “[Lively] claims that Defendants’ counsel has threatened witnesses, journalists, media entities, and others if they publish unfavorable information about Baldoni or other Defendants.”
Lively’s subpoena to the law firm demanding any agreements they signed with content creators to represent them, any invoices concerning or relating to content creators regarding the case, the banking information for the account where any payments to creators were sent and all communications from Freedman regarding his public statements from August 1, 2024, to present. In addition, she asked for all phone records to show Freedman’s call with any source regarding the public statements he made about Lively that she deems defamatory.
The court said the law firm opposed the majority of the requests. The firm also said it did not have any agreements to represent any creators or documents regarding payments between the firm to creators.
“The Court grants the motion to [shut down the subpoenas] to the extent that Lively seeks agreements into which [the law firm] has entered for the purposes of representing Content Creators in unrelated matters. [In court], Lively suggested the possibility that [the law firm generally and Mr. Freedman specifically could have funneled money to Content Creators who were clients of the [law firm] in the form of discounts on legal fees in exchange for the publication of negative material about Ms. Lively.
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The judge noted, “But at this stage, that assertion is speculative, of tangential relevance, and may be tested by discovery from other sources.”
The request for the firm’s communications with journalists was denied.
“Lively has not demonstrated a need at this point to obtain those documents from Liner, and there is a potential risk that the requests would encroach on the attorney-client privilege, attorney work product doctrine, or attorney-client relationship more generally,” the judge noted.
The court also denied Lively’s request for information regarding his public statements about her.
The court said Lively could obtain the information from the law firm via alternative methods and not a subpoena.
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The judge noted, “Freedman’s allegedly defamatory statements are to the effect that Lively is a liar and the allegations in her complaint are not true. One obvious source of information forming the basis for Freedman’s statements would be communications made to Freedman by his clients in the course of seeking legal advice. Such communications would be privileged.”
As Us previously reported, Lively was deposed as part of the legal battle on July 31 in New York. Sources told Us that Baldoni was present in the room while Lively was questioned by his lawyers.
Lively and Baldoni are scheduled to face off again at the trial scheduled to start on March 9, 2026.
