- A judge on Monday told the warring lawyers in the Lively-Baldoni case to nix the public trash talk.
- The order to play nice came during an acrimonious hearing in federal court in Manhattan.
- Also at the hearing, Lively’s lawyer said she plans to sue more defendants by Friday.
A judge on Monday ordered the warring parties in the sprawling litigation between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni to stop trash-talking each other’s clients on television and online.
The order to play nice in public — in other words, to follow New York state rules banning attorney statements that could prejudice a jury, or else face financial sanctions — came during an acrimonious hearing in federal court in Manhattan.
Lawyers for the “It Ends With Us” costars took turns at a podium reading from each other’s press statements and pointing figurative fingers over who was the worst offender and who “started” the dueling media campaigns that have become a side-show to the court case.
“This was not started by us, your honor,” Baldoni lead lawyer Bryan Freedman complained to the judge at one point Monday.
Baldoni and Lively did not attend the hearing, which was their attorneys’ first courtroom face-off in the litigation. Lively accuses Baldoni of sexually harassing her during the film’s production. Baldoni alleges in a $400 million countersuit against Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, that her accusations are libelous.
At the hearing Monday a lawyer for Lively accused Baldoni’s lawyer of repeatedly insulting the actress, including by calling her “a bully” last month on the podcast of conservative host Megyn Kelly.
Lively’s lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, also accused the Baldoni attorney of saying on Kelly’s show “that if Blake Lively, if she was sexually harassed, then she wouldn’t have returned to the film.”
“There’s no guardrails in place,” Gottlieb complained, his voice angry. “We have to do our work in this case and then we have to go on shows and argue about what this particular evidence or text message shows?”
Baldoni’s lawyer meanwhile said that his client has lost “tens of millions of dollars” from the negative publicity. He accused Lively’s legal team of planting a New York Times story that “was completely devastating” to the actor months before any filing was ever made in the case. “They very pointedly used the press and the New York Times,” Freedman complained.
“That is a disputed point,” US District Judge Lewis J. Liman responded.
The judge told the lawyers for Lively and Baldoni to follow New York’s rules of attorney conduct concerning pretrial publicity. The rules bar lawyers from making out-of-court statements that they know could impugn the character or reputation of a witness.
What’s already on the official court docket “gives plenty for the public to feast on,” the judge said. The judge also said he was concerned that if the public warring does not stop, there would be “satellite litigation” in which the attorneys sued each other over their statements.
The judge also issued a warning — if the public warring continues, he would move up the trial date, set for March, 2026, so that the war is shortened.
“If it turns out that this ends up being litigated in the press in a way that will prejudice the opportunities of the parties for a fair trial, then one of the tools that the court does have available to it is to accelerate the date of the trial,” the judge said.
Also at the hearing, Lively’s lawyer said he would be filing an amended lawsuit on Friday that will add to the list of defendants she is suing. The lawyer did not say who would be added.
