Taylor Swift is no longer facing a subpoena in the messy legal battle between her friend Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni after Baldoni dropped the document request, which Swift’s reps had fiercely criticized as “tabloid clickbait.”
Lively’s reps confirmed to Billboard on Thursday (May 22) that the Baldoni camp has dropped separate subpoenas they served on both Swift and her longtime law firm Venable earlier this month in litigation over the movie It Ends With Us, in which Baldoni and Lively are hurling dueling accusations of sexual harassment, retaliation and defamation.
Baldoni’s lawyers had sought communications between the Swift and Lively teams, claiming they heard from an unnamed source that Lively had asked Swift to delete text messages and tried to extort the pop superstar into publicly supporting her in the lawsuit. Lively’s reps denied those contentions as “categorically false,” and a judge quickly struck those claims from the case docket as improper, irrelevant and “potentially libelous.”
Lively’s spokesperson says in a statement shared with Billboard that they are “pleased that Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer parties have withdrawn their harassing subpoenas to Taylor Swift and her law firm.
“We supported the efforts of Taylor’s team to quash these inappropriate subpoenas directed to her counsel and we will continue to stand up for any third party who is unjustly harassed or threatened in the process,” the statement continues.
“The Baldoni and Wayfarer team have tried to put Taylor Swift, a woman who has been an inspiration for tens of millions across the globe, at the center of this case since day one,” Lively’s rep adds. “Faced with having to justify themselves in federal court, they folded. At some point they will run out of distractions from the actual claims of sexual harassment and retaliation they are facing.”
Venable also confirmed in a court filing Thursday that Baldoni withdrew his subpoena targeting the law firm.
Reps for Baldoni and Swift did not immediately return requests for comment Thursday. But a spokesperson for Swift previously said she had no involvement in It Ends With Us and slammed Baldoni for trying to “use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
The It Ends With Us legal battle began in December when Lively alleged in a lawsuit that Baldoni had sexually harassed her on the set of the movie released last summer and later orchestrated a public relations smear campaign to retaliate against her for complaining about the behavior.
Baldoni then countersued Lively for defamation and claimed the actress leveraged her relationship with a “megacelebrity friend,” presumed to be Swift, to bully her way into more control of It Ends With Us.
Baldoni’s legal filing included text messages concerning an alleged meeting attended by “Ryan and Taylor,” seemingly referencing Swift and Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds. In one message sent by Lively, the actress called Swift and Reynolds her “most trusted partners” and compared them to the “dragons” in the TV show Game of Thrones.
“The message could not have been clearer,” Baldoni’s lawyers wrote in the countersuit. “Baldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively’s ‘dragons,’ two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.”
