Blake Lively made ‘super shady' legal move months before accusing Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment: report
Blake Lively reportedly filed a 'super shady' lawsuit before publicly accusing her It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment in her complaint.
The lawsuit was filed in September with the Gossip Girl star's company Vanzan as the plaintiff in an attempt to subpoena allegedly incriminating text messages from Baldoni's now-ex-PR team without Lively's name being attached, according to the Daily Mail.
The Jane the Virgin star's former publicist Stephanie Jones and her company, Jonesworks, received a subpoena requesting all documents and communications regarding Baldoni, Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds.
Jones reportedly turned over private messages between former staffer Jennifer Abel, who continued working with Baldoni, and PR crisis manager Melissa Nathan.
The messages have since been used by Lively's legal team as the basis for claims that Baldoni, Nathan and Abel orchestrated a smear campaign against the Another Simple Favour actress, 37, while promoting It Ends With Us in August 2024.
An alleged text from Nathan read, 'We can bury anyone.'
The lawsuit, however, was withdrawn on December 19, 2024, a few days before Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment in a complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department.
A legal expert referred to the tactic as 'super shady' while speaking to the Daily Mail.
'They intentionally did this to really work in a very surreptitious and clandestine way,' lawyer Ron Zambrano, who has no relation to the case, claimed to the outlet.
Baldoni's lawyer Bryan Freedman also slammed the lawsuit as a 'sham' in a statement to Page Six.
'Ms Lively's and Mr Reynolds' company Vanzan had nothing to do with this case and they knew it,' Freedman said.
'This sham lawsuit was designed to obtain subpoena power without oversight or scrutiny, and in doing so denied my clients the ability to contest the propriety, nature, and scope of the subpoena.
'There is nothing normal about this. Officers of the court have a duty of candour to the court and an obligation not to file fictitious lawsuits that have no basis in fact or law. … This was done in bad faith and constitutes a flagrant abuse of process.'
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