Justin Baldoni Loses 'Highly Personal & Intimate Information' Court Battle With Blake Lively; Risk Of Disclosure Is Great,' Judge Warns Both Sides

Yahoo

13-03-2025

Trying to plug leaks, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds have succeeded in what can be shown to whom in their legal conflict with Justin Baldoni, at least for now.
'The parties have levelled accusations of theft of trade secrets and the disclosure of confidential sensitive information against one another,' a pragmatic Judge Lewis J Liman noted today with some degree of understatement almost a year before the trial between the It Ends With Us stars starts on May 29, 2026.
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'The Court's model protective order is not sufficient for the needs of these cases,' the federal Judge added, issuing most of the Attorney's Eyes Only protection that A-listers Lively and Reynolds sought for the discovery process. Unless you've been stuck in space with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams the past four months, you'd know this has been a very high profile and media matter since Lively filed her sexual harassment and retaliation compliant against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios and other with California's Civil Rights department on December 20.
At a long March 6 hearing over what the scope of any protective order should be and who should be allowed to look at discovery evidence, Judge Liman called the gist of this whole thing 'a feud between PR firms.' Certainly, in what is now a multi-lawsuit battlefield with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in potential damages, reputations and careers, Team Blake and Team Baldoni have both weaponized the court of public opinion as much as the courts themselves to varying degrees.
Now, that's to be expected in a case that features PR heavyweights such as Leslie Sloane (Team Blake + a defendant) and Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel (Team Baldoni + also defendants) in the mix, along with the New York Times. In her CRD complaint, New Year's Eve suit against Baldoni and his inner circle, and a subsequent amended complaint, Lively has insisted that an astroturfing smear campaign was activated against her last summer by Nathan and Abel as a measure to blunt any accusations of misconduct the Gossip Girl vet could make public against Jane the Virgin alum leading up to the hit film's August 2024 release.
Late last year, as text message between flacks indicate, Abel in a now deleted posting admitted a preemptive attack was considered and planned. However, the former Joneswork staff also admitted that such an attack as never launched because 'the internet was doing the work for us' against Lively
To that, with lawyers like Baldoni lead attorney Bryan Freedman becoming as much a player in the story as the IEWU co-stars, a week after a long NYC hearing on the scope of protective order that could be in place, Judge Liman summed up the reality of the situation on Thursday.
He wrote: 'These cases involve both business competitors and allegations of sexual harm. Discovery will necessarily include confidential and sensitive business and personal information. The risk of disclosure is great. Both the Moving Parties and the Wayfarer Parties have accused opposing parties of providing private, sensitive, or confidential information to the media for their own business and personal advantage in ways that cannot easily be traced. Several individuals and corporations on each side are in the business of public relations or media and have easy access to the press.'
Leaving little ambiguity of what the rules of engagement will be going forward, Judge Liman laid out that 'the following categories of information may be designated 'Attorneys' Eyes Only':
a. Trade secrets; confidential business plans, marketing plans, and strategies for clients other than the parties in this litigation; confidential business projects or leads on projects for clients other than the parties in this litigation; confidential creative projects or ideas other than those involved in this litigation;
b. Security measures taken by parties or third parties;
c. Medical information of parties or third parties;
d. Highly personal and intimate information about third parties, and highly personal and intimate information about parties other than information directly relevant to the truth or falsity of any allegation in the complaints in this case.
The Judge concluded: 'The protections conferred by this Order cover not only Confidential and Attorneys' Eyes Only Information but also any information copied or extracted therefrom, as well as all copies, excerpts, summaries, or compilations thereof.'
Not that Lively and the Deadpool star got everything they and their lawyers were looking for in the AEO.
'The Court has narrowed the provision to stated that information may be marked AEO only if its disclosure is 'highly likely to cause a significant business, commercial, financial, or privacy injury,' Judge Liman noted Thursday.
In that context and terms that may be subjective in certain lights, as Sloane and her Vision PR filed more paperwork to get themselves dismissed from the case, both Team Blake and Team Baldoni are claiming a win — as they often do in this tit for tat.
'Today, the Court rejected the Wayfarer Parties' objections and entered the protections needed to ensure the free flow of discovery material without any risk of witness intimidation or harm to any individual's security,' a spokesperson for Lively told Deadline after Judge Liman's order hit the federal docket. 'With this order in place, Ms. Lively will move forward in the discovery process to obtain even more of the evidence that will prove her claims in Court.'
'We are fully in agreement with the Court's decision to provide a narrow scope of protections to categories such as private mental health records and personal security measures that have never been of interest to us as opposed to Ms. Lively's exceedingly over broad demand for documents for a 2.5 year period of time which the court rightly quashed,' attorney Freedman asserted for Team Baldoni. 'We remain focused on the necessary communications that will directly contradict Ms. Lively's unfounded accusations. We will oppose any efforts by Ms. Lively and her team to hamper our clients' ability to defend against her attacks by incorrectly categorizing important information as 'trade secrets,' especially considering there were no issues in providing these communications willingly to The New York Times.
The Gray Lady, who published the article 'We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,' about Lively's allegations on December 21, are, like Leslie Sloane, attempting to extricate themselves from the legal clash.
Judge Liman was yet to rule or even schedule hearings on both the NYT and Sloane's efforts.
Outside of the main event of Livley vs Baldoni, there is also self-described 'hired gun' and alleged Nathan pal Jed Wallace's $7 million suit against Lively. Then there is the Quinn Emanuel represented Stephanie Jones and her Jonesworks firm. In a separate case, filed just before Christmas, Jones is has taken Baldoni, Wayfarer, execs, crisis PR boss Nathan and Abel to court for defamation and breach of contract. Abel was an employee of Jonesworks and Baldoni was a client until last year when both bolted and Abel formed her own PR firm RWA Communications.
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