A federal judge, weighing in for the first time in dueling lawsuits between the actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, on Monday ordered lawyers on both sides to limit their commentary outside court, in an effort to tamp down some of the back-and-forth accusations in the highly publicized dispute.
At a hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan, a lawyer for the actress objected to what he called “inflammatory” comments by Bryan Freedman, an attorney for Mr. Baldoni, as he contests her allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation surrounding the movie “It Ends With Us.”
Since Ms. Lively came forward in December with claims against Mr. Baldoni — who directed the movie and starred in it with Ms. Lively — Mr. Freedman has done media interviews and provided statements disputing the actress’s accusations that she was the victim of harassment and then a smear campaign.
At the hearing, a lawyer for Ms. Lively, Michael J. Gottlieb, said that Mr. Freedman had unfairly attacked the actress’s character — including by accusing her of bullying behavior — warning that his statements threatened to taint the pool of potential jurors for an eventual trial.
“You’re not supposed to launch attacks on the other party’s character,” Mr. Gottlieb said.
Lawyers for Mr. Baldoni have countered that Mr. Freedman’s comments have followed ethics rules and were made in response to a “media feeding frenzy” started by Ms. Lively. Mr. Freedman also read aloud statements from Ms. Lively’s legal team, including one that described Mr. Baldoni’s lawsuit as employing a strategy associated with harassment called DARVO, which stands for “deny, attack and reverse victim and offender.”
“This has not been a one-way street,” Mr. Freedman said at the hearing.
The conflict between the two high-profile actors has become a fixation for Hollywood, tabloids and social media in recent weeks. The legal dispute also includes a producer, public relations executives and journalists.
Presiding over a courtroom full of journalists and lawyers for the various parties, Judge Lewis J. Liman of U.S. District Court in Manhattan ordered that the attorneys abide by a New York rule that aims to prevent a lawyer from making public statements outside court that have a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing” the proceedings.
Judge Liman noted that the court documents laying out the actors’ claims gave “the public plenty to feast upon.” But ultimately, he said, the battle over whose narrative of events is correct will play out in court.
“There will come a time, unless this case is settled, that a jury will speak,” the judge said.
Neither Ms. Lively nor Mr. Baldoni attended Monday’s hearing.
In recent days, the public has been parsing footage of a scene at issue in Ms. Lively’s lawsuit that was released to news outlets alongside a statement from Mr. Freedman. Mr. Baldoni’s team also published a website where users can download public court documents that contain dozens of pages of communications related to the production of the film.
The lawsuits filed by the actors have presented differing accounts of what happened on the set of “It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of a novel about a woman’s escape from domestic abuse. In the film, Ms. Lively plays the heroine, and Mr. Baldoni portrays her partner who perpetrates the abuse.
Defendants in Ms. Lively’s lawsuit include Mr. Baldoni, who is a founder of Wayfarer Studios, a company that produced the film, as well as Jamey Heath, Wayfarer’s chief executive, along with a public relations team.
The suit accuses Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath of sexual harassment, claiming that the two entered Ms. Lively’s trailer uninvited while she was undressed or breastfeeding. Also in the suit, the actress accused Mr. Baldoni of improvising unwanted kissing during filming and making comments about his “previous pornography addiction.”
Ms. Lively raised objections about the men’s behavior to the studio, which agreed to her requests for changes on set. But her lawsuit claims that, as the film release neared, Wayfarer hired a crisis communications specialist to devise a “retaliation campaign” against her out of concern that she would make her grievances public. Ms. Lively’s court papers cite text messages that appear to show Mr. Baldoni and his public relations team strategizing about how to protect his reputation and harm hers. One text cited was a message from one publicist that said that “he wants to feel like she can be buried.”
Mr. Baldoni’s suit contests her allegations, saying that no one entered her trailer without knocking first and asking permission. The suit denies that the kissing scenes Ms. Lively referred to were improvised, and says that Mr. Baldoni discussed a former pornography addiction in the context of having struggled because he was exposed to it as a child.
Instead, he and his team have accused Ms. Lively and her husband, the actor Ryan Reynolds, as well as her publicist, of defamation and extortion, claiming that the actress brought her grievances to “extract concessions and creative control” of the movie. Mr. Baldoni’s lawyers have denied that his public relations team engaged in a smear campaign and contend that he was the victim of an effort by Ms. Lively to harm his reputation.
The hearing was the first time that lawyers for the actors have appeared in court since the legal dispute began on Dec. 20, when Ms. Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department against Mr. Baldoni and others on his team. A day later, The New York Times reported on her accusations, quoting excerpts from text messages, emails and other documents related to the case.
Mr. Baldoni has sued The Times for libel, asserting that the article deliberately omitted portions of text exchanges and other information that contradicted the actress’s version of events. That suit was initially filed in California, but on Friday he added The Times as a defendant in his suit against Ms. Lively in New York.
The Times has said in a statement that it plans to “vigorously defend against the lawsuit,” calling the article “meticulously and responsibly reported.”
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