Blake Lively's camp seeks sanction against Justin Baldoni's lawyer over leaking deposition details
Blake Lively's lawyers have accused Justin Baldoni's lead counsel, Bryan Freedman, of leaking her deposition details to the press.
In a motion for sanctions filed on Aug. 4, Lively's camp asked to strike the 292-page rough draft transcript of her deposition on July 31, which remains sealed, from court records. They said that there is "no conceivable legal purpose" to file the whole transcript on the public docket and alleged that Baldoni is using the sworn pre-trial testimony as part of a PR strategy.
"The transcript was ostensibly filed in support of their argument that there is no basis to assert that Bryan Freedman or his firm have participated in, fueled, and advanced a smear campaign against Ms. Lively such that their conduct has 'amounted to public relations work rather than that of an attorney,'" Lively's lawyers wrote in the filing obtained by Deadline.
According to the document, the transcript has yet to be reviewed, corrected, or finalized, and only two pages were cited, but the full draft was still attached.
"The Wayfarer defendants and their counsel hope to make Ms. Lively defend the continued sealing of the transcript so they can advance a false narrative that Ms. Lively is afraid of her deposition testimony becoming public, which is entirely untrue and deeply harmful," the filing read.
Lively's team has also accused Baldoni's camp of leaking details from the deposition to tabloid media. TMZ, citing unnamed sources, on July 31 reported that Baldoni was in the room while his It Ends With Us co-star was being questioned at her lawyer's office in New York City.
The actress called this an apparent move to advance a storyline that the deposition was a "face-to-face showdown" between the former co-stars.
The leaks also continued to detail what Lively wore for her deposition and who accompanied her.
"The narrative created was that Ms. Lively needed a large contingent of people with her to testify, while misleadingly suggesting that only Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Freedman were present for the deposition on their side," the filing stated, adding that Wayfarer Studios CEO Jamey Heath, the production company's co-founder Steve Sarowitz, Baldoni's PR manager Melissa Nathan, and a member of the actor's crisis PR team Jennifer Abel.
The case
The deposition focused on Lively's sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni, which allegedly happened on the set of It Ends With Us. She also accused Baldoni and Heath of running a smear campaign against her.
Judge Lewis J. Liman dismissed some cases filed by Baldoni, which involved a $400 million (P22 billion) countersuit accusing Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and their publicist of extortion and defamation, and a $250 million (P13.9 billion) libel lawsuit against The New York Times over its Dec. 21, 2024 article titled 'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.
In her complaint, Lively accused Baldoni and Heath of telling her about their past sexual relationships and "previous porn addiction." Heath also allegedly showed Lively a video of his wife naked and giving birth. Baldoni and Heath likewise supposedly entered Lively's makeup trailer without permission, "including when she was breastfeeding her infant child." Lively also recalled Baldoni claiming he could communicate with the dead, including her father, Ernie Lively. She found it "off-putting and violative."
The New York Times later published a report titled 'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine, which used excerpts from alleged text messages and emails that Lively obtained through a subpoena and detailed the work of crisis management firm TAG PR for Baldoni, including allegedly planting negative stories in the media.
In response, Baldoni's camp has called the accusations in the report "categorically false." They later released a series of video takes during the production of It Ends with Us in an attempt to debunk Lively's sexual harassment allegations, which prompted Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, to request a gag order.
On Feb. 3, Baldoni launched a website containing two documents: his $400 million 224-page amended complaint against Lively and Reynolds and a 168-page "timeline of relevant events," which included a compilation of screenshots as an additional exhibit to his amended complaint. It came two days before their first court hearing.
The trial for the Lively v. Wayfarer Studios et al. case is slated for March 2026.
