Justin Baldoni is continuing to push for access to Blake Lively’s text messages with Taylor Swift in litigation over the movie It Ends With Us, saying the communications could reveal whether the actress is owed damages for emotional distress from alleged sexual harassment and retaliation.
Swift became a figure in the messy legal dispute last month, when Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, subpoenaed the pop superstar for her communications with Lively. Baldoni later dropped the Swift subpoenas but is now seeking the text messages directly from Lively — a move that Lively’s lawyers criticized in a court filing last week as designed to seize on Swift’s star power and “prop up a public relations narrative.”
In a response filing on Tuesday (June 17), Baldoni’s lawyers say these texts are indeed relevant to disproving Lively’s allegations that Baldoni sexually harassed her on the set of It Ends With Us and then orchestrated a retaliatory smear campaign when she complained.
Team Baldoni claims Lively’s own discovery disclosures identify Swift, her longtime friend, as someone with knowledge about what she went through. The actor-director’s lawyers also say Swift would know whether Lively actually suffered emotional distress because they socialized amid the debacle, including by stepping out for a double date a few months after the release of It Ends With Us this past fall.
The latter point is key because if Lively shows that Baldoni’s conduct harmed her emotionally, she could be entitled to a higher monetary award in the case.
“Although we appreciate the positive influence Ms. Swift’s music has had on her worldwide audience, it was Ms. Lively and not the Wayfarer Parties that contemporaneously inserted Ms. Swift into this dispute, and Ms. Lively cannot use Ms. Swift’s stardom to withhold evidence,” write Baldoni’s lawyers.
Spokespeople for Lively declined to comment on Baldoni’s latest court filing. Last week, they said that the continued attempt to drag Swift into the dispute “reflects a public unraveling of epic proportions” and “serves only to distract” from the recent dismissal of Baldoni’s counter-lawsuit accusing Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and others of defamation.
Swift’s reps have not commented on the matter since Baldoni first subpoenaed her. In a statement in May, they said the singer had no involvement in It Ends With Us and that the move was “designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Meanwhile, Lively served a subpoena of her own last week on music mogul Scooter Braun, a longtime public opponent of Swift’s. Lively is seeking information from Braun about the alleged public relations takedown orchestrated by The Agency Group PR, a controlling stake of which is reportedly owned by Braun’s company, HYBE America.
