Blake Lively’s and Justin Baldoni’s Lawyers Want Each Other to Stop Talking
Continuing the courtroom drama over statements in the press.
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Even as Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively’s lawyers agreed on Februay 3 to be more diplomatic in their comments to the media amid the This Ends with Us co-stars’ ongoing legal battle, that didn’t put a stop to finger-pointing.
“Not to sound like a 4-year-old fighting a 4-year-old with the ‘But they started it,’” Baldoni attorney Bryan Freedman said, “but once someone says something, it becomes fact. There’s no way to fight against it.”
“This was not started by us, Your Honor,” he added.
The lawyers’ accord came at around the 90-minute mark of a Manhattan federal-court proceeding in which Judge Lewis Liman weighed everyone’s views on case-scheduling. Liman didn’t tell anyone to stop talking with the media but ordered both sides to respect rules on legal decorum — which include not making comments that could thwart fair proceedings.
Michael Gottlieb, Lively’s lawyer, had filed court papers outlining his concerns that Freedman was making inappropriate comments about the case to “media across the country.” Gottlieb also cited Baldoni’s new case-related website, which includes the director’s civil complaint and a lengthy document containing texts with Lively. (Among Freedman’s comments: Lively’s “sole intent [was] to ruin the lives of innocent individuals and then went the extra mile to place blame on a fictitious smear campaign.”)
“They don’t dispute that they have been out regularly in the press, making attorney statements attacking fact allegations in this case, attacking Ms. Lively, using words that describe her motive, her character, describing the complaint as being filed for PR purposes,” Gottlieb said. “It’s very difficult to unring that bell when an attorney is targeting how the public is consuming information about a particular case.”
Freedman, who is also representing Baldoni’s press reps in the sprawling litigation, countered that Lively; her husband, Ryan Reynolds; and spokesperson Leslie Sloane had launched their own media salvo months prior, working with the New York Times to publish an exposé, which, they contend, falsely accused Baldoni of misconduct.
“They very pointedly used the press,” Freedman told Liman, also saying, “This has not been a one-way street.”
Liman was hesitant to order the lawyers to act ethically in terms of comms but issued a directive, as he didn’t want the case to devolve into “satellite litigation” over lawyers’ comments. Both sides, Liman continued, “have said a lot in the pleadings that you’ve got in front of the court that gives, I think, the public plenty to feast upon.” Liman said there would be a dramatic solution if both sides couldn’t play nice. “If it turns out that this ends up being litigated in the press in a way that would prejudice the opportunity for parties [to have] a fair trial,” Liman said, “one of the tools that the court does have available to it is to accelerate the date of the trial.”
However, “I don’t want to do that,” he said. The trial remains scheduled for March 9, 2026.
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