It doesn’t seem much like the languid dog days of summer for Justin Baldoni when it comes to the It Ends With Us director’s sprawling legal fracas with Blake Lively over her claims of sexual harassment on the Sony released flick and the alleged online smear campaign that followed last year.
With the brouhaha of earlier this month over Lively’s (now very much sealed) deposition being partially leaked and placed on the court docket finally dying down and Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios battle with various insurance companies over funds to pay legal fees still very much heating up, the former Jane the Virgin actor this week has coming out swinging for his main lawyer and against accusations of harassment of a different sort from another IEWU actress.
“Ms. Lively’s post-litigation conduct has done nothing to endear her to the public, the press or ‘content creators,’” Wayfarer attorney Kevin Fritz proclaims in an August 18 opposition filing to Lively’s motion for sanctions against sharp and sometimes silver tongued Baldoni top lawyer Bryan Freedman. “A recent barrage of subpoenas has angered and alienated those already critical of Ms. Lively, forcing a number of them to seek this Court’s intervention.”
Then, with an impressive number of Deadline posts on the legal saga that started when Lively filed a complaint over Baldoni’s alleged misconduct with the California Civil Rights Department, the Meister Seelig & Fein partner goes to town, with some help from Liner Freedman Taitelman + Cooley’s Ellyn S. Garofalo. A few weeks back, Lively’s 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’s ongoing “publicly slandering” 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 — unlikely).
“Blissfully 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,” Fritz states in a request to see the wide ranging sanctions and the motion for them tossed out. “She 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’ fees, a reprimand and revocation of Mr. Freedman’s pro hac vice admission for statements primarily relating to whether Ms. Lively would appear at deposition and the falsity of her claims.”
Having seen his own $400 million countersuit against Lively, Ryan Reynolds, their publicist and the New York Times kicked to the curb in June, Baldoni and his Wayfarer crew are now awaiting Judge Liman’s decision on Freedman’s fate.
Today, 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.
“The 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. “In 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 “through the present” is or is not appropriate for the specific requests.”
What the Wayfarer Parties have had a change to respond to and certainly have responded to is It Ends With Us actress Isabela Ferrer’s accusations that Baldoni and team have been trying to “harass” her and “engaged in bad faith tactics” over a subpoena related, no surprise, to the Lively case.
Lawyers for Ferrer, who played the younger version of pal Lively’s IEWU Lily Bloom character in the picture, said in an August 17 filing that they objected to Baldoni’s team’s desire to be permitted to “serve her by alternative means,” after several unsuccessful and self-described “diligent” attempts. In fact, lawyers for Ferrer, who assumed her legal costs would be covered by the production under her contract, don’t like the subpoena at all. “Baldoni 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.”
Monday, Baldoni’s team took just a day to swing back with a letter of their own – with Lively as exhibit 1:
It was not the Wayfarer Parties who first subpoenaed Ms. Ferrer – 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’s apparent desire to avoid involvement in the litigation and trial.
What the outcome of that dispute is remains as of tonight TBD – like so much of this case.
The post Justin Baldoni Accuses “Tone-Deaf” Blake Lively Of Trying To Constitutionally Repress Lawyer Bryan Freedman; Spars With Isabela Ferrer Over Subpoena appeared first on Deadline.
