The judge presiding over the legal feud between “It Ends With Us” co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni held off on restricting what the lawyers can say about the case publicly, but he might move up the trial date if the war of words between the actors’ representatives drags on.
U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman issued the warning Monday, Feb. 3, at a pretrial hearing in New York City — the first time lawyers on both sides of the legal dispute met face to face in a courtroom. Lively and Baldoni were not present. The trial is set to begin in March 2026.
“You’ve got a lot in front of the court that gives, I think, the public plenty to feast upon,” Liman told the lawyers.
Lively has accused Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of the movie and then working with others to smear her in the media. Baldoni, in response, sued Lively and her husband, “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds, alleging defamation.
Lively and Reynolds’ legal team asked the judge in a letter last month for a gag order for Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman, accusing Baldoni’s legal team of continuing its “harassing and retaliatory media campaign” against Lively with “almost daily media statements or other releases to the press.”
Michael Gottlieb, Lively’s attorney, said Lively is devastated by the battle with Baldoni, who also directed “It Ends With Us,” a drama about domestic abuse based on a bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover.
During the hearing, Gottlieb said the attacks from both sides’ playing out in the media has created an “arms race” with no guardrails.
Gottlieb compared the dynamic with his adversary, Freedman, to “two 4-year-olds in a playground.”
The hearing — ostensibly to discuss a case management plan, legal issues and discovery — devolved into accusations of leaks, harassment and retaliation.
Both sides say they want to move forward with discovery, and Freedman has said he is ready to depose Lively. She and her team are adamantly against that plan. Liman said that Freedman will not be allowed to depose her but that otherwise “she doesn’t get to choose her interrogator.”
Attorneys for Baldoni, who co-starred, directed and adapted “It Ends With Us,” went on offense recently, launching a website linking to his lawsuit and 168 pages of what he says are hundreds of personal emails, documents and texts between the two, as well as their publicists and crisis managers.
Most of the purported messages are friendly, including one from Lively to Baldoni that reads: “if you knew me (in person) longer you’d have a sense of how flirty and yummy the ball busting will play. It’s my love language. Spicy and playfully bold, never with teeth.” It was not clear what Lively was specifically referring to in that text.
Gottlieb told the court Monday that he wants to know who created the website and who funded it.
Baldoni is seeking $400 million in the suit against Lively and Reynolds alleging defamation and extortion. Lively’s legal team responded by accusing Baldoni’s team of using a tactic associated with perpetrators of abuse called DARVO — deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.
He and his publicists are also suing The New York Times alleging defamation after it published a bombshell article in December about Lively’s allegations of a smear campaign. Baldoni has alleged the newspaper worked with Lively to smear him.
In a statement that appeared in its article about the libel suit, the Times said: “We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
“The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead,” the statement said. “Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article.”
Freedman said Baldoni has lost hundreds of millions of dollars since the article was published. “People react before judicial determination as to who is right and who is wrong,” he said.
The clash began when Lively filed a civil rights complaint in Los Angeles against Baldoni on Dec. 20 accusing him of sexual harassment on the set. She accused him of hiring a crisis firm to engage in a “social manipulation campaign” to smear her while both were promoting the film. She subsequently filed a federal lawsuit in New York. Baldoni’s attorney has called the allegations “completely false.”
Baldoni bought the rights for “It Ends With Us” through Wayfarer Studios in 2019. Plans surrounding its development, including Lively’s casting, had been a buzzed-about topic in the years leading up to the movie’s release.
During the film’s media tour, fans began theorizing about dynamics between the stars behind the scenes. That led to a firestorm for Lively as an online narrative began to spread that accused her of being insensitive and controlling and of engaging in “mean girl” behavior.” She says Baldoni’s team fanned the flames to try to destroy her reputation, an allegation his attorney has denied.