It’s fun to light money on fire!
The post Lively-Baldoni Lawyers Play Smashmouth Along With Their Clients appeared first on Above the Law.
Blake Lively (Photo by NILS MEILVANG/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)
The Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni litigation is off to a predictably batshit start, with Lively’s lead counsel already accusing his counterpart of professional misconduct and defamation.
The fun started on New Year’s Eve when Lively filed a sexual harassment complaint in New York against her former co-star and producer, along with his production company Wayfarer and various publicists and partners. At the very same time, Baldoni was docketing a spectacularly ill-judged defamation suit in California state suit against the New York Times, alleging that it laundered false claims from Lively’s civil administrative complaint to spare the actor from having to defend herself in court:
Notably, Lively chose not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer, or any of the Plaintiffs—a choice that spared her from the scrutiny of the discovery process, including answering questions under oath and producing her communications. This decision was no accident. First, her administrative complaint is rife with blatant falsehoods and egregious misrepresentations that would have subjected her to dismissal if not sanctions. Second, pursuing formal legal action would have derailed her true objective: an orchestrated campaign to rehabilitate her public image.
On January 16, Baldoni et al filed suit in New York against Lively, along with her husband Ryan Reynolds, demanding $400 million for defamation and “civil extortion.”
The cases were designated as related, and both landed on the docket of Judge Lewis Liman, who just got rid of Rudy Giuliani and is probably wondering what he’s done to deserve a double portion of this bullshit.
Correspondence docketed by Lively’s lawyer Michael Gottlieb of Willkie Farr shows that he tried to effectuate service through Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman, an experienced media litigator from California. Freedman not only ignored those requests, but disregarded Gottlieb’s attempt to waive personal service for Lively and Reynolds.
“Plaintiffs’ process servers made attempts at service on the evening of January 18, 2025, which resulted in one of Defendants’ employees (who is not a party to this action) being followed to the residence in which she was staying by an unknown vehicle down a dark road late at night,” Gottlieb complained in a letter to the court on January 19. “This conduct was sufficiently alarming as to cause that employee to file a police report.”
Freedman counters that Lively and Reynolds falsely attested that Baldoni requested the waiver of personal service in his offensive suit. To be fair, they signed the standard form waiver which says “I have received your request to waive service of a summons in this action along with a copy of the complaint,” since it does not appear to have occurred to the Southern District of New York that a plaintiff would insist on his right to harass a defendant by executing personal service. But waiving service extends the time to reply from 30 days to 60, and so Freedman demands that his clients’ response deadlines be extended to harmonize them with the earlier-filed suit.
“In sum, the Lively Parties falsely engineered an extension of time, until March 20, 2025, to respond to the Complaint in the Wayfarer Case but now refuse to consent to the same deadline for the Wayfarer Parties, even though doing is in the interests of justice and efficiency in cases that are not only related but likely will be consolidated,” he huffs.
Meanwhile, Freedman has been going on every podcast he can to trash Lively, and she is PISSED. Since December 20, Gottlieb has been sending cease and desist letters accusing Baldoni and Freedman of defaming his clients by falsely claiming that Wayfarer took “no proactive measures … with media or otherwise” and “only responded to incoming media inquiries to ensure balanced and factual reporting and monitored social activity” prior to the New York Times article about Baldoni.
“Lawyers are not publicity agents. We are required to follow a different set of professional standards than publicists and crisis managers. One of those standards is the prohibition against knowingly making factual misrepresentations, even when doing so would help defend or promote our clients’ interests,” Gottlieb warned, noting that the California Rules of Professional Conduct require lawyers to refrain from public misrepresentations. The letter also accuses Freedman of continuing his client’s breach of the agreement signed in November of 2023, which barred Baldoni from retaliating against Lively as a condition of her return to finish the film.
In a letter to Judge Liman, Gottlieb accused Freedman of deliberately seeking to prejudice the jury pool, in violation of N.Y. Rules of Pro. Conduct 3.6(a), which bars an attorney from making “an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.”
“The Lively-Reynolds Parties intend to seek an appropriate protective order to govern further proceedings in this case, but given the imminent harm caused by Mr. Freedman’s misleading and selective statements and leaks, we respectfully request that this Court schedule a hearing as soon as possible to address the appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward in these two related matters,” he concluded.
As of now, Judge Liman appeared uninterested in wading into this sniping. This afternoon he issued a show cause order demanding to know why these cases should not be consolidated.
Wayfarer v. Lively [Docket via Court Listener]
Lively v. Wayfarer [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
