In the latest twist in the legal saga between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, Lively is dropping two claims against Baldoni of emotional distress.
As if the drama couldn’t get any messier, the accusations continue to fly. Baldoni’s lawyer filed a letter requesting that the judge in the case compel Lively to “identify her medical and mental health care providers” — signing a HIPAA release to open up access to her therapy notes and pertinent medical info, as People reported.
Rather than do so, the letter says, Lively requested to withdraw her claims of emotional distress, but maybe just for now. Baldoni’s attorney Kevin Fritz said the actor wanted to keep the right to re-file those emotional distress claims at a later time — but Lively “can’t have it both ways.”
Lively’s lawyers take another view.
Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb accused Baldoni’s legal counsel of a “press stunt,” saying they are simply “preparing our case for trial by streamlining and focusing it,” as per Deadline’s reporting.
U.S. District Court Judge Lewis J. Liman had this to say on Tuesday: The two parties must decide “whether the dismissal is with or without prejudice” before proceeding further — the claims are either to be dismissed forever or possibly pursued again, but there is no in-between.
Representatives of Baldoni and Lively did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on Tuesday.
The order comes as the latest event in the lawsuit, with a trial set to begin in March 2026. Lively initially filed a sexual harassment and retaliation complaint in September.
She accused Baldoni, along with his team, of orchestrating a smear campaign against her after she reported on-set sexual harassment, as first reported by the New York Times.
Most recently, Lively sought to dismiss a defamation countersuit from Baldoni. The motion, filed in March, cites a California law that prohibits “weaponizing defamation lawsuits” against those who have filed suit or “spoken out about sexual harassment and retaliation.”
Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman later called the motion “one of the most abhorrent examples of abusing our legal system.”
But Lively’s motion only picked up steam as it drew widespread support from advocacy groups. Equal Rights Advocates, a gender equity and workplace protection-oriented nonprofit based in San Francisco, urged a federal judge to support the motion and uphold the aforementioned law.
Jessica Schidlow, legal director at Child USA, a nonprofit that pushes for more legal protection of abuse victims, told The Times in May that if the law were to be struck down, it would “essentially do away with the protections for all survivors.”
“It would be a devastating setback and completely undermine the purpose of the law, which was to make it easier for victims to come forward and to speak their truth without fear of retaliation,” she added.
The post Blake Lively drops two claims of emotional distress against Justin Baldoni appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
