Justin Baldoni officially filed tonight to have Blake Lively‘s sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against him and his Wayfarer Studios team tossed out, However, the It Ends With Us star doesn’t want to publicly say why — at least not right away.
In a surprise move in a case full of legal Jiu-jitsu, Baldoni and Wayfarer’s newish lead lawyer Alexandra Shapiro filed a motion for summary judgement just before tonight’s East Coast deadline. The motion asked a federal judge to keep out the public eye most related documents to her clients’ bid to see the case ended – kinda.
“To be clear, the Wayfarer Parties do not believe that much of this material should be sealed, especially to the extent it includes Blake Lively’s contemporaneous communications with others about her work on the film, which are central to the dispute at hand,” an accompanying 2-page letter from Shapiro to Judge Lewis Liman argues also filed tonight. “Nonetheless …the Wayfarer Parties request that the Court not rule on this letter motion to seal for one week, so that the parties can meet and confer and so that any party may file motions for continued sealing if they so choose.”
Informing citizens that “you do not have permission to view this document,” a slew of filings such as Baldoni’s early October deposition in the much covered case, as well as text messages between Baldoni and fellow defendants ans flacks Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nation, to name just a couple, are currently out of the public sphere. Yet, an admittedly redacted memorandum of law from Baldoni, Abel, Nathan, Jamey Heath, It Ends With Us Movie LLC, It Ends With Us Movie LLC,Steve Sarowitz, Wayfarer Studios LLC, and Wayfarer Studios LLC could provide a road map for where the defendants want to take Lively’s initially December 20, 2024 filed California Civil Rights Department complaint on IEWU.
Sidestepping the obvious ironies in what Judge Liman earlier this year tersely called a “feud between PR films”, the memo makes no reference to the pricey and high-profile lawyers such as Bryan Freedman that Team Baldoni has had on beck and call for nearly a year. Leaving Sarowitz’s massive wealth on the shelf for a second as well as Judge Liman’s quip earlier this year, there’s also apparently damning texts among some of the Wayfarer PR folk detailing and laughing over a campaign (never executed insist the defendants) to preemptively take a bite out of Lively over Baldoni’s alleged misconduct.
“Aided by two of the world’s largest litigation firms, Lively now seeks to create causes of action where none exist,” the un-sealed (for now) memo of law states, accompanied by a series of exhibits listings, including one document laying out 279 declaration and deposition excepts. The still unsealed filing goes on to assert that Lively “cannot show the behavior she disliked was caused by her sex or gender, a basic prerequisite for her “sexual harassment” claims.
According to Baldoni’s legal team, Lively “alleges Baldoni’s resort to public relations professionals was ‘retaliation’ for ‘complaints’ she had raised.
The memo continues: “This ignores the large temporal gap, not to mention the many intervening events, between her raising of concerns and Baldoni’s resort to crisis-management professionals. There can be no claim for retaliation based on purported complaints raised in the distant past. Nor did Baldoni and his co-defendants engage in a defamatory “smear campaign.” It was not illegal for Baldoni to promote positive content about himself or truthful narratives about various events. That Lively’s reputation may have suffered is a result of her own ill-advised public statements and actions.
Echoing what judge Liman said months ago about this case and PR firms, but putting a new spin on it, the summary judgement memo says, “his is a dispute about Hollywood reputations, not genuine legal wrongs. It does not belong in court.’
Whether or not, the case (in which a very specific Lively is seeking damages of nearly $500 million) belongs in federal court in NYC or anywhere else, in Texas Wednesday District Judge David Alan Ezra granted Lively’s motion to dismiss digital self-described “hire gun” Jed Wallace’s suit against the Another Simple Favor actress.
“While the Court recognizes that Plaintiffs may not have had extensive opportunity in the present case to conduct discovery, the issues underlying this case have been under extensive litigation in other courts for nearly a year and yet Plaintiffs fail to provide the Court with any greater level of detail beyond the speculation that ‘on information and belief,’ Austin, TX situated Judge Ezra wrote, offering Wallace and crew the chance to file a new complaint on the matter.
(L-R) Blake Lively Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us (Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing / courtesy Everett Collection)
Sony Pictures Releasing /Courtesy Everett Collection
if Wallace, who recently saw a NYC-based suit of Lively’s against him dismissed over jurisdiction, chooses to file a new case in Texas or bunker down and let it go, Lively’s team can smell victory blood in the water “With this decision, all of the retaliatory lawsuits filed against Blake Lively by Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and their crisis communications and digital teams have been dismissed,” a spokesperson for the actress said Wednesday with a not so subtle reference to the June 9th dismissed $400 million countersuit of Baldoni’s. “Ms. Lively will have her day in court on her claims at the March trial in New York.”
As it stands right now, Lively, with Ryan Reynolds by her side, and Baldoni and the Wayfarer defendants are set to start trial on March 9, 2026 in New York.
With months to go and some summary judgements to be dealt with, witnesses have not been formally called yet.
Still, besides Lively and Reynolds plus Baldoni and his inner circle, names like Taylor Swift, Reynolds’ Deadpool & Wolverine co-star Hugh Jackman, Emily Blunt, Sony Pictures execs Tony Vinciquerra, Tom Rothman, and WME‘s Ari Emanuel and former co-chair Patrick Whitesell were among those revealed on November 6 on a just unsealed early discovery list for having pertinent information for what really went down on IEWU and in the aftermath.
And, based on the drip, drip, explosion of the past year, you just know there is more to come before March 2026. Keep eye on the docket with Lively’s own summary judgement filing sure to be humdinger too.
