A judge has quickly shut down an attempt by Justin Baldoni’s attorney to use the It Ends With Us litigation docket to accuse Blake Lively of extorting Taylor Swift, saying the filing is improper and “transparently invites a press uproar” without providing any relevant information for the federal court case.
The order, which came down from Judge Lewis J. Liman on Thursday (May 15), strikes Baldoni lawyer Bryan Freedman’s letter from just one day earlier in which he claimed that an unnamed source told him Lively had asked Swift to delete text messages and threatened to release private communications unless the pop star voiced public support for her sexual harassment and retaliation claims against Baldoni.
Lively’s legal team was quick to deny the allegations as “categorically false” and “completely untethered from reality,” saying such claims have no place on the court docket. Judge Liman agreed a few hours later, writing that Freedman’s letter “is improper and must be stricken.”
“The sole purpose of the letter is to promote public scandal by advancing inflammatory accusations, on information and belief, against Lively and her counsel,” the judge wrote. “It transparently invites a press uproar by suggesting that Lively and her counsel attempted to ‘extort’ a well-known celebrity. Retaining the letter on the docket would be of no use to the court.”
Judge Liman wrote that under governing case law from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, federal court dockets should not be “co-opted” to “promote scandal arising out of unproven, potentially libelous statements.”
“Counsel is advised that future misuse of the court’s docket may be met with sanctions,” Judge Liman wrote.
Lively’s representatives celebrated the decision Thursday, with a spokesperson for the actress saying in a statement, “It took the court less than 24 hours to see through Mr. Freedman’s irrelevant, improper and inflammatory accusations, strike them, remove them from the court and warn Mr. Freedman that further misconduct may be met with sanctions.”
Freedman did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling.
Swift’s reps have not commented on the Lively extortion accusations, but they forcefully criticized Baldoni last week for dragging the pop superstar into the It Ends With Us litigation by way of a subpoena.
“The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, ‘My Tears Ricochet,’” said Swift’s spokesperson at the time. “Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Lively alleges in the case that Baldoni, her co-star and director on the movie released last summer, sexually harassed her on set and then orchestrated a public relations smear campaign to retaliate against her after she complained.
Swift was brought into the fray when Baldoni countersued Lively for defamation and claimed that the actress leveraged her relationship with a “megacelebrity friend,” presumed to be Swift, to bully her way into more control of It Ends With Us.
Baldoni’s legal filing included text messages concerning an alleged meeting attended by “Ryan and Taylor,” seemingly referencing Swift and Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds. In one message sent by Lively, the actress called Swift and Reynolds her “most trusted partners” and compared them to the “dragons” in the show Game of Thrones.
“The message could not have been clearer,” Baldoni’s lawyers wrote in the countersuit. “Baldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively’s ‘dragons,’ two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.”
