Blake Lively will be deposed this week at a Manhattan location of her choosing, a judge ruled Monday after Justin Baldoni accused the actress of pulling a “celebrity status” card.
Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Liman granted the request by Lively, 37, to choose where her rival’s lawyers will grill her Thursday in the pair’s bombshell court battle.
The feuding duo had been squabbling over whether the “Gossip Girl” star’s sworn testimony should take place at Baldoni’s legal team’s offices at 125 Park Avenue or those of Lively’s attorneys, which are “a mere mile apart,” his lawyers claimed.
The judge also granted Lively’s request that Baldoni, 41, notify her of everyone he will bring to the deposition by noon Tuesday.
Liman said Lively’s side must “make arrangements” for Baldoni’s lawyers to have a private space, a dedicated computer and a printer during the questioning under oath.
The pair have been locked in a bitter court battle since Lively filed a $250 million lawsuit against Baldoni, claiming he sexually harassed her on the set of 2024’s “It Ends With Us” — which he directed and co-starred in.
On Sunday, Baldoni’s team asked Liman to stop Lively’s team’s from “unilaterally dictating” the logistics of her upcoming deposition.
“Although Lively’s stomping and use of her celebrity status may have enabled her to seize control of the film, which is the crux of this dispute, her counsel’s tantrum has no place in this court,” Baldoni’s side wrote in the filing.
Lively has accused Baldoni and his publicist of launching a smear campaign against her after the filming of the movie. She is also suing the film’s production company.
Baldoni — an alum of the TV show “Jane the Virgin” — then launched a $400 countersuit for extortion and defamation against Lively and her actor husband Ryan Reynolds, which Liman dismissed last month.
The latest legal salvo over where Lively’s deposition would take place began when her lawyers accused Baldoni’s attorneys of trying to stage a media circus for the closed-door grilling.
“Defendants have not denied that their intent is to manufacture a harassing publicity stunt by requiring Ms. Lively to parade through paparazzi, or by inviting unknown attendees to the deposition, including members of the media or social media influencers, or any other number of abusive tactics,” her lawyers wrote in court papers July 11.
Lively’s legal team said it would be safer for her if the questioning took place at a specific location, which her lawyers redacted in the filing.
Lawyers for Baldoni and the production company then claimed in the Sunday court papers that Lively’s side hadn’t presented “a single fact to support her allegations of a ‘plot’ to use the deposition as a ‘publicity stunt.’”
On May 8, Baldoni and the production company’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, told People Magazine he wanted Lively’s deposition to take place “at [Madison Square Garden], sell tickets or stream it” — a comment that Lively’s side cited in their papers, accusing their opponents of trying to make it a media circus.
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