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There’s no end in sight to the “It Ends With Us” legal battle — only more escalation.
Attorneys for Blake Lively demanded legal sanctions against one of Justin Baldoni’s lawyers on Monday, hours after accusing him of leaking her deposition details to “the tabloids.”
The latest contentions began Monday afternoon, when Lively’s attorneys filed a letter accusing Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, of engaging in “an ongoing character attack” designed “to undermine Ms. Lively’s credibility and taint the jury pool.”
Hours later, Lively’s team upped the ante by filing a notice that they are seeking sanctions against Freedman for allegedly violating professional conduct rules of the state of New York, where her sexual harassment lawsuit is filed.
“Ms. Lively respectfully submits that the Court should impose sanctions against Mr. Freedman as a consequence of his relentless media campaign to harm Ms. Lively’s character, credibility, and reputation,” the notice says.
An attached memorandum explaining the reasons for sanctions remained sealed Monday night.
But the three-page letter her team filed earlier Monday accuses Freedman of creating a “media circus” by leaking to “the tabloids” details of the deposition she gave attorneys for Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, on Friday.
Baldoni himself attended the deposition, TMZ posted soon after the deposition, in a story headlined “Justin Baldoni is in the room!!!” the letter from Lively’s legal team complains.
“Consistent with their goal of creating a media circus around Ms. Lively’s deposition, it also appears that the Wayfarer Defendants immediately leaked details from the deposition to the tabloid media,” reads the letter, signed by Lively’s attorney Esra Hudson.
“This began by selectively sharing from a ‘source in the room’ that Mr. Baldoni was in attendance, apparently to advance a storyline that the deposition was a face-to-face showdown between Mr. Baldoni and Ms. Lively,” the letter reads.
The letter also complains that Freedman also immediately posted a sealed copy of the 292-page transcript of the Lively deposition in the court file, “with no plausible legal reason to do so.”
Freedman and his own attorney did not immediately respond to requests from Business Insider for comment on Lively’s accusations.
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