Blake Lively Blocks Justin Baldoni: Inside the Battle Over Taylor Swift’s Communications

Blake Lively has requested that a judge prevent further discovery involving Taylor Swift in her ongoing lawsuit with Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director in “It Ends With Us.”

Lively’s legal team filed a motion urging the court to limit Baldoni’s attorneys from accessing any communications between Lively and Swift, deeming them irrelevant to the current legal proceedings.

Previously, Baldoni’s attorneys had issued subpoenas to Swift and her legal representatives. These were later rescinded following objections from Swift’s lawyer, who criticized the move as an unnecessary and excessive probe.

Lively’s camp is now aiming to permanently remove Swift from the legal conflict, claiming that her inclusion by Baldoni’s legal team was primarily for creating media buzz rather than any substantive legal reason.

A significant development occurred on Monday when Judge Lewis Liman dismissed Baldoni’s claims of defamation and extortion against Lively and the New York Times. These claims had mentioned Swift, suggesting she supported Lively in a creative disagreement regarding the film and that Lively had referred to the singer as one of her “dragons.”

What remains is Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni and others at Wayfarer Studios for harassment and retaliation. Lively accuses them of initiating a defamation campaign against her following her complaints of sexual misconduct during the movie’s production.

“The only allegations in this action that were ever remotely relevant to Ms. Swift were in the Wayfarer Parties’ now dismissed complaint,” stated Lively’s attorney, Esra Hudson. “Ms. Swift does not appear at all in Ms. Lively’s amended complaint.”

Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s attorney, previously claimed in a court filing—now stricken from the record—that he had been informed Lively persuaded Swift to delete their text messages. This filing was dismissed by the judge as irrelevant.

When Baldoni’s legal team withdrew their subpoenas against Swift and her attorney, they claimed to have obtained what they initially sought, thus negating the need for further subpoenas.

Contrarily, an email from Swift’s lawyer, Doug Baldridge, to the involved legal parties stated, “No documents are being produced and no deposition is being scheduled.” Baldridge had moved to quash the subpoena but agreed to retract it following the withdrawal of the subpoenas.

Lively’s attorneys point out that if anything was indeed received from Swift’s team by Baldoni’s side, it has not been shared with them.

“The ongoing attempts to once again try and use the world’s biggest star as a PR tactic in this matter reflects a public unraveling of epic proportions,” remarked a spokesperson for Lively, “and serves only to distract from the fact that Justin Baldoni’s lawsuits against Ms. Lively, Ryan Reynolds, their publicist, and the New York Times have been entirely dismissed.”