Blake Lively's lawsuit deposition is shaken up as she faces down Justin Baldoni in shock appearance

Daily Mail​

a day ago

Blake Lively had an unexpected guest in the room when she testified on Thursday as part of the deposition in her sexual harassment lawsuit — Justin Baldoni, the man she filed suit against.
The 37-year-old actress — whose legal team previously shared fears that Baldoni would try to make a spectacle out of her deposition — gave her sworn testimony while facing her 41-year-old It Ends With Us costar and director, sources told TMZ on Thursday.
The legal foes were gathered at the office of Lively's attorneys, where she had requested that the deposition be held.
Baldoni's presence there was a shock, as he was reportedly not expected to attend the deposition, in which Lively answered questions under oath posed both by Baldoni's attorneys and her own.
Notably, the judge overseeing the case had ordered Baldoni's attorneys to provide a list of everyone who would be attending the deposition, and it is unclear if Baldoni's name was on that list or if his team was able to deviate from what it originally submitted.
DailyMail.com has reached out to representatives for Lively and Baldoni for comment but hasn't yet received a reply.
Baldoni's appearance at the deposition was ultimately less of a distraction that what his attorney Bryan Freedman had originally suggested: that Lively be sworn in at Madison Square Garden.
He said at the time that tickets could be sold to the spectacle, with the proceeds to be donated to domestic violence victims.
According to the publication, the deposition was otherwise a modest gathering.
Lively was joined by her attorneys, while Baldoni and his attorneys were also present, along with a court reporter and a videographer to document the proceedings.
The Gossip Girl star's deposition had originally been set for July 17, but it had to be rescheduled after the legal teams came to a mutual agreement.
Matthew Russell Lee from Inner City Press previously reported that Lively had requested that the deposition last no longer than seven hours.
While federal rules already state that depositions can last a maximum of seven hours per day, some complicated cases require multiple days of testimony.
However, Lively requested that she only be subjected to a single day under oath.
Lively was joined by her attorneys, while Baldoni and his attorneys were also present, along with a court reporter and a videographer to document the proceedings; pictured June 9 in NYC
The postponement of the deposition was necessitated after Lively's claims against the PR expert Jed Wallace were dismissed by the judge overseeing the case.
A spokesperson for Lively told TMZ that Lively respects the court's decision to dismiss Wallace from the lawsuit due to jurisdictional reasons.
They added that it 'has nothing to do with the merits of her allegations about Mr. Wallace's role in the smear campaign and relates solely to the procedural question of whether he is subject to jurisdiction in New York or elsewhere.'
Her team said they are still considering their 'numerous options for holding Mr. Wallace accountable.'
Lively is suing Baldoni, his publicity team, and other defendants, alleging that they retaliated against her after she made sexual harassment allegations.
She claims Wallace was hired because he engages in 'untraceable' campaigns across social media platforms, and could 'weaponize a digital army' to 'create, seed, manipulate and advance disparaging content.'
He was described in her civil rights complaint acting as a 'hired gun' for Baldoni.
Wallace filed a defamation lawsuit against the actress earlier this year.
Lively was granted the request to pick the location of her deposition by a judge earlier this month, according to Variety, after her lawyers argued that Baldoni's attorneys were trying to turn the proceeding into a media spectacle.
Baldoni's side requested for the deposition to be held at the Park Avenue offices of Meister Seelig & Fein, one of the firms handling his case.
However, Lively's team objected to the location in a motion last week, claiming they feared a media ambush in which Lively could be swarmed by paparazzi on her way in and out of the building.
Baldoni pushed back on her claim by accusing her of trying to use her 'celebrity status' to gain an upper hand in the proceedings.
Lively's team also raised concerns that Baldoni would invite social media influencers to be present at the deposition, which is intended to be confidential.
On Monday, Judge Lewis Liman approved for the deposition to be held at a different location, which has been redacted in the public version of the motion.
Lively's lawyers also asked for Baldoni's side to provide a list of everyone who will be attending.
Liman granted the request, with Baldoni's team instructed that they need to provide the list by noon on Tuesday.
Baldoni pushed back on her claim by accusing her of trying to use her 'celebrity status' to gain an upper hand in the proceedings; He is pictured 2024
The judge also instructed Lively's team to provide printing and copying facilities for Baldoni's lawyers.
In a moment of snark, Baldoni's attorney Bryan Freedman previously told TMZ that Lively's deposition should be live-streamed to an audience at Madison Square Garden.
Freedman's suggestion, which Lively's attorney shot down at the time as a publicity-seeking distraction, would be to sell tickets to the event and donate the proceeds to domestic violence victims.
Lively's team argued that Freedman's remarks demonstrated he couldn't be trusted to keep things professional if the deposition occurred at the place of his choosing.
Mitchell Schuster, one of Baldoni's lawyers, dismissed the concern as unfounded, adding that holding the deposition somewhere else would be inconvenient for his team.
The two sides are preparing to face off in court after they clashed while filming It Ends With Us last year.
After Lively claimed that Baldoni's side would try to make the deposition into a 'public spectacle', the filmmaker hit back by arguing, via his lawyer, that Lively has not supported her claim with evidence.
According to TMZ, Baldoni's defense team believes holding the deposition at Lively's lawyer's office puts them at a disadvantage.
Baldoni's lawyer cited the potential need to consult with his hundreds of pages of notes and to use a conference room to speak in private.
Baldoni's side wrote in the filing, 'Although Lively's foot-stomping and use of her celebrity status may have enabled her to seize control of the film, which is the crux of this dispute, her counsel's tantrum has no place in this Court. Lively is bound by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure like every litigant.'
The parties have currently agreed to conduct the deposition on July 17, though recent legal filings indicate that the two sides have been in conflict over discovery requirements.
In emails between Lively and Baldoni's attorneys that were entered into the record, Lively's lawyers accused Baldoni's team of failing to mail hard drives of evidence to them in a timely manner, which would make it difficult for the Gossip Girl star and her team to examine any documents or videos the defendants may refer to when questioning her.
Her legal team also expressed concern in the new filings that Baldoni may hope to have her paraded in front of paparazzi and gawkers if the deposition is held in a less-private location.
In a statement to TMZ, Lively's representative said: 'Ms. Lively is looking forward to her deposition next week, and it should follow the same rules as every other witness in this case.
'Justin Baldoni's lawyer has tried to make this matter a public spectacle at every turn, even proposing to sell tickets to a televised deposition at Madison Square Garden,' they continued. 'This is a serious matter of sexual harassment and retaliation and it deserves to be treated as such.'
Lively, who along with husband Ryan Reynolds, 48, was dismissed from Baldoni's $400 million defamation and extortion lawsuit nearly a month ago, is tentatively slated to take the stand when the trial begins in New York City in March 2026.
Insiders close to Lively told the outlet that she was prepared to face a series of difficult inquiries at her deposition, and that Reynolds isn't expected to attend.
Lively has accused Baldoni of sexual harassment in a lawsuit; while Baldoni accused Lively, her husband Reynolds and publicist Leslie Sloane of defamation and extortion in a $400 million suit - the latter of which was dismissed.
Baldoni has denied the allegations brought about by Lively, while Lively, Reynolds and Sloane have denied the accusations made in litigation by Baldoni.
In June, Lively suffered a setback in the case when a judge denied her attorneys' application for a protective order seeking to block her text messages with Taylor Swift from being entered as evidence.
Baldoni's team subpoenaed Lively for text messages, emails and any other messages between her and Swift.
His lawyers have subsequently been allowed to pore through the text trail, with all communications related to It Ends With Us set for scrutiny.
In one embarrassing text exchange, Lively appeared to refer to herself as the Game of Thrones character Khaleesi, and to Swift as one of her 'dragons.'
Elsewhere in Baldoni's filing is the claim that Swift was present at a meeting convened by Lively at her New York penthouse to discuss It Ends With Us script changes.
Sources close to Swift insisted the singer had no knowledge of the meeting and simply arrived to find it underway.
The situation reportedly left Swift — who is godmother to Lively's three daughters — feeling 'exploited' by her friend of ten years.