There’s no end in sight to the “It Ends With Us” legal battle — only more escalation.
Attorneys for Blake Lively demanded legal sanctions against one of Justin Baldoni’s lawyers on Monday, hours after accusing him of leaking her deposition details to “the tabloids.”
The latest contention began Monday afternoon, with a letter from Lively’s attorneys accusing Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman of engaging in “an ongoing character attack” designed “to undermine Ms. Lively’s credibility and taint the jury pool.”
Hours later, Lively’s team upped the ante by filing notice that they are seeking sanctions against Freedman for allegedly violating professional conduct rules of New York, where her sexual harassment lawsuit is filed.
The state’s attorney professional conduct rules bar pretrial statements attacking the character, credibility, and reputation of a legal opponent.
“Ms. Lively respectfully submits that the Court should impose sanctions against Mr. Freedman as a consequence of his relentless media campaign to harm Ms. Lively’s character, credibility, and reputation,” her lawyers tell US District Judge Lewis Liman.
An attached memorandum explains the reasons Lively’s side is seeking sanctions. Freedman has made public statements, including in the entertainment gossip site TMZ, accusing Lively of being “afraid of the truth” and of being a “privileged elite” who has been “abusing our legal system.”
“During one interview conducted by his former client, Megyn Kelly, Mr. Freedman made numerous disparaging comments about Ms. Lively while Ms. Kelly referred to Ms. Lively as a ‘bitch,'” the sanctions memorandum says.
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A three-page letter her team filed earlier Monday likewise accused Freedman of creating a “media circus” by leaking to “the tabloids” details of the deposition she gave on Friday, under questioning by attorneys for Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios.
Baldoni himself attended, TMZ posted soon after the deposition, in a story headlined “Justin Baldoni is in the room!!!” the letter from Lively’s legal team complains.
“Consistent with their goal of creating a media circus around Ms. Lively’s deposition, it also appears that the Wayfarer Defendants immediately leaked details from the deposition to the tabloid media,” reads the letter, signed by Lively’s attorney Esra Hudson.
“This began by selectively sharing from a ‘source in the room’ that Mr. Baldoni was in attendance, apparently to advance a storyline that the deposition was a face-to-face showdown between Mr. Baldoni and Ms. Lively,” the letter reads.
The letter also complains that Freedman also immediately posted a sealed copy of the 292-page transcript of the Lively deposition in the court file, “with no plausible legal reason to do so.”
Freedman and his own attorney did not immediately respond to requests from Business Insider for comment on Lively’s accusations.
