Law&Crime Sidebar - Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni Battle Over Cell Phone Records

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Actress Blake Lively wants to begin gathering additional evidence in her lawsuit against “It Ends with Us” co-star and director Justin Baldoni, but his legal team says her demands are excessive and possibly a “ploy” to intimidate Baldoni. The two are facing off in dueling lawsuits, each accusing the other of harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber breaks down the latest legal filings.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Blake Lively wants to begin gathering additional evidence in her lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, but his legal team is saying, not so fast. Your demands for material are way too much and are just a media ploy and maybe potentially aimed at intimidation. We're going to break down this new conflict between the two stars. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber.

Another battle is brewing in the ongoing conflict between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively. This time, it is about subpoenas. Now, we talked about the start of this last week, how Lively has gone on the offensive right now, as lively, as we know, she has sued Justin Baldoni, her co-star, director of It Ends with Us, the film that they were in together. She also sued his production company, Wayfarer, executives, PR, and crisis management experts that apparently worked with him, all alleging that Baldoni sexually harassed her and then launched a retaliatory smear campaign against her.

And as Baldoni fired back in a lawsuit against her, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, also suing the New York Times. His argument is there was a coordinated effort to destroy his reputation with false allegations that he says were weaponized against him for Lively to essentially get control of the movie, take control of all aspects of production to get her way. And as all of this is going on, it was reported that Lively's legal team sent out a bunch of subpoenas to companies, one of the first steps in any kind of litigation. In fact, we talked about the last week. But her attorneys, Ezra Hudson and Michael Gottlieb, said in a statement that was published in the Hollywood reporter, quote, Ms. Lively has initiated discovery that will expose the people,

tactics, and methods that have worked to destroy and bury her reputation and family over the past year. We will now receive all of the receipts that, unsurprisingly, are nowhere to be found on Mr. Friedman's website. And like Ms. Lively, those receipts will have to be found. have their day in court. Now, this is referring to Baldoni's attorney Brian Friedman and the website that was purportedly launched by him and Baldoni's team featuring an amended complaint in this case and also their version of a timeline of events in this story that featured never before seen text messages between Baldoni and Blake Lively and Baldoni and Ryan Reynolds. And we've dedicated several episodes of Cybar to breaking those down. If you want to check them out, they're up

on our long crime YouTube page. But just to further this before we get into the major update, a spokesperson for Blake lively and Ryan Reynolds said to deadline also, quote, we look forward to investigating more about Jed Wallace's entire business model and what else he was doing to distract from the very real sexual harassment and retaliation claims made by Ms. Lively. We are delighted to be able to start discovery on it. Now, Jed Wallace is very interesting because he is somebody that Blake Lively initially named as a defendant in her first civil rights complaint that she filed with the California

Civil Rights Division, but she didn't name him as a defendant as of yet in her official lawsuit. He ended up filing a lawsuit against her. His argument was, you first name me as a defendant, then you don't name me as a defendant. You defame me. You asserted false allegations against me. I had no part in this alleged smear campaign against you. She claims that he was one of the people who helped launch this digital army against her. The allegation was that there was a ton of negative stories and press and social media accounts that were all highlighted and amplified against her and he was a part of it. So he has sued her for defamation. Actually, he's been seeking a declaratory judgment, meaning he wants the court to come forward and say, we looked

at this. He is in no way a part of this alleged smear campaign against you. He wants a court to actually make that statement. I mentioned before I think that's an uphill battle, but just to give you an idea. She wants to, you know, look a little bit more into all aspects of this case. As you can see, the lively Baldoni case is very legal heavy. It shows off the skills of these litigators. And I'll tell you what, talking about this, talking about lawsuits, particularly in the field of personal injury cases, having a great lawyer matters. It is so important. And that is where our great partner and sponsor Morgan and Morgan comes in. This is a firm with over a thousand attorneys. You know how they have so many? Because they win a lot. In the past few

months, Morgan and Morgan secured a $29 million verdict for a bicyclists in Philadelphia, $2.7 million verdict for a car accident victim in Florida, not to mention $5.6 million for a car crash victim in Georgia after insurance offered that client $0. And even if you think your case isn't worth millions of dollars, why not start a claim and fight for what you deserve? And Morgan and Morgan makes it so simple. You can start a claim from your phone in just eight clicks. So if you're injured, you can easily start a claim at for the people.com slash LC sidebar. So we want to move on to what is happening right now. So the lawyers for Baldoni and co filed a letter with the judge overseeing this case,

Honorable Lewis J. Lyman. And they say they want to make the court aware of a discovery issue, namely what they call, quote, overbroad subpoenas. Their letter reads, earlier this week, the lively parties issued subpoenas to cellular providers, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. seeking, quote, all documents concerning ingoing and ongoing calls or text messages related to phone number, and then it's blocked out, belonging to each of the individual Wayfair parties, some of their employees, and various non-party individuals, including but not limited to call logs, text logs, data logs, and cell site location information. The subpoenas seek such information over a period of multiple years. In most cases, spanning from December 1st, 2022 to the press. present. Now, what are they looking for? Keep that in mind. I'm going to get back to that in a little bit, but I will tell you subpoenas in any case, but particularly this case, subpoenas for electronic records are so crucial. I mean, do we forget how all of this started when lively filed her initial precursor complaint with the Civil Rights Department I mentioned in California? This was before she filed her official lawsuit. That complaint, and then the subsequent article that was published by the The New York Times featured bombshell text message conversations between Justin Baldoni

and his PR and crisis management team and also between them. And lively claim that these messages proved there was a plan to damage her reputation in the media, online, and in the public. And how did they get all of these text messages? Well, apparently they got these text messages, even though, by the way, that Baldoni claims these were cherry-picked and incomplete conversations, but they apparently got all these tax messages through subpoenas. Although, I will tell you, it wasn't entirely clear from where they got them, because according to Variety, though, her lawyers stated that they

got the messages through a subpoena to Jones Works LLC. We'll talk about them in a little bit, but this was the company of a former PR representative for Justin Baldoni. She's engaged in her own separate litigation. I'll talk about that a little bit later. But Brian Friedman, who is one of Justin Baldoni's attorneys, he came out and said that none of his clients were actually subpoenaed those. So did it all come from Jones Works LLC? I guess not entirely clear, but interesting. Anyway, you put that to the side. Once they got the messages, and look, they got the messages, then they launched this civil action. But let me be clear about something else. Those subpoenas were for the contents of those messages, right? We saw what those messages were. What's going on

here is a little bit different. I want to continue on because in the letter it says it is hard to overstate how broad, invasive, and atypical these subpoenas truly are. This is civil litigation, not a criminal prosecution, and the lively parties are not the FBI. Yet the subpoenas seek not only the complete call and text history of each of the targets over a period of several years, no matter the sender, recipient, or subject matter, but also over the same period real-time location information and data logs reflecting, among other things, web browsing history. This would include, of course, materials protected from disclosure by a laundry list of statutes and privileges. Among them, the attorney-client privilege, the spousal privilege, and

the physician-patient privilege. Moreover, the information sought by the subpoenas is wildly disproportionate to the needs of the case, and unnecessarily invades the privacy of untold numbers of third parties, including family, friends, business partners, and quite literally any other person with whom any of the targets have communicated with over a period of years. And then they cite federal rules of civil procedure 26, which limits discovery to, quote, any non-privileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. Yes, they cite that language, but there are two other components of that rule that I want to list out to. Also, you have to consider, quote, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues and whether the burden or expense of the

proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. And it also says, by the way, information within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable. In other words, you can maybe get access to material during this initial discovery phase that you may not ultimately be able to introduce a trial due to issues like privilege or relevance, prejudicial issues. The judge will ultimately determine what can and can't come in leading up to the trial. But the key is not everything is subject to discovery. And if you're asking for something, what is the burden on the parties who have to respond here? So it has to be relevant, it has to be proportional, it has to be important, it can't be overly burdensome.

The letter continues, quote, unfortunately appears that these subpoenas are more than anything else a media ploy, having been promptly leaked alongside a lengthy and combative statement by the lively party's legal testimony. team. They actually seemingly referenced the comments from Lively's attorneys, Mr. Gottlieb and Mr. Hudson that I mentioned before. And honestly, even if that's true, kind of hard to blame the attorneys for making a public statement like that, given how public this battle has been in the numerous comments that Baldoni's attorney, Brian Freeman, has made in interviews into various media outlets, although I will tell you right now, the court put on an admonition, a warning to both sides. Be careful about what you say in this. media. Don't do anything that would prejudice this case in any way that might taint a future

jury. But I will say, it honestly seems, though, that Baldoni's legal team doesn't really fault Lively's attorneys for making statements in the media because they write in the letter. The Wayfair parties are not remotely concerned about the lively party's public statement, however hypocritical, and do not object to their use of third-party discovery tools. The Wayfair parties are using such tools themselves, albeit in a far narrower and legally permissible fashion. The letter continues. However, the Wayfair parties are deeply concerned that the lively parties are intimidating third parties and providing information about our clients and various non-parties far beyond what is appropriate or even legal in civil litigation,

including spousal communications, medical information, attorney-client communications, and real-time location information, among other things. The subpoenas constitute a flagrant abuse of the discovery process, and if allowed to stand, set a precedent that once their bluster dissipates, we are confident the lively parties' counsel will not be prepared to accept when it comes to the scope of discovery into their own clients' private information and communications. In other words, meaning wait till we subpoena Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds' information. After all, what Baldoni's team has presented so far has just been his communications with

Blake Lively, his communications with Ryan Reynolds and his communications with producers, executives, his publicist, crisis management specialist, the apparent intimacy coordinator. But what about the conversations between Blake Lively and, let's say, her publicist, or Ryan Reynolds and other people? Now, I will tell you, communications between Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, since they're married, that may be off limits due to the spousal privilege, those private communications, between husband and wife. They may possibly not be disclosed. We'll see which way that shakes out. But going back to the letter, and this part is important because usually a court will say,

look, before you come to the court to complain about discovery issues, discovery disputes, can you try to figure this out between you two? Can you try to figure it out between the other side? Here's what the letter states. Quote, this afternoon, we conferred in good faith via telephone with the lively parties council regarding the subpoenas, but were unable to resolve the dispute. matter is highly time sensitive, as certain of the cellular providers have already indicated they intend to comply with the subpoenas. The Wayfair parties, therefore, request your honors attention at the soonest possible opportunity. Well, now we have a response from Blake lively's side, her legal team. And unsurprisingly, as we have seen with all aspects of this case

so far, we have a completely different view and characterization of what is going on. Here's the opening paragraph of their letter. Quote, the Wayfair parties have failed to meaningfully meet and confer regarding their objections before seeking intervention from the court and completely misrepresent the subpoenas that have been served. The Wayfair parties request to quash the subpoenas accordingly should be denied. The Wayfair parties have sued Ms. Lively for a preposterous sum of $400 million for claiming, based on the Wayfair party's own communications, that a retaliatory campaign existed, yet now appear to fear having third parties turn over the actual evidence that would document the who, what, when, where, and why of that campaign.

On February 12th, 2025, the lively Reynolds parties issued notices of the subpoenas to the aforementioned carriers, seeking non-content records, that is, numerical logs, related to 15 specific individuals. Each individual is either a party to this action or the related matter. of Jones v. Abel or is an agent employee of a party who appears, based on evidence discovered in this case, to have a direct connection to the underlying issues. By the way, the Jones v. Abel case that was just mentioned there, that is a separate lawsuit going on. So Stephanie Jones, who owns, as I mentioned before, Jones Works LLC, she was the former publicist of Justin Baldoni. She ended up suing him. Her former employee, Jennifer Abel, who acted as Baldoni's PR agent,

and she's actually a defendant in the lawsuit filed by Blake Lively. Melissa Nathan, this is Baldoni's crisis management expert, again, another person being sued by Blake Lively, but she's also a defendant in the Jones action. But here, Jones claims that, look, I wasn't a part of this alleged smear campaign against Blake Lively. And these defendants, Baldoni, Abel, Nathan, they conspired behind my back to do this, and they ended up pointing the finger at me and attacking. me. But anyway, give you a side note. That's that separate action there. Back to the subpoenas. So Lively is claiming that these subpoenas to these communication companies are about 15 people

who are either parties in this lawsuit or they are agents and employees of a party. So let's say, I'm just using an example here. If Justin Baldoni had an assistant, perhaps his communications with that person should come up or that assistance communications with a third party should come up. The paragraph continues, the requests are tailored to the time during which evidence shows each individual may have been involved in acts giving rise to Ms. Lively's claims. Such information is not only relevant, but essential to unearth the network of individuals involved in the alleged retaliation scheme against Ms. Lively. And to add a little bit more to that, so later on, and this has emphasized a bit more, it says, quote, the requested records will provide

objective evidence on when and how the defendants and witnesses learned about Ms. Lively's harassment allegations, and whether when and with whom the Wayfair parties coordinated efforts to discredit Ms. Lively through the press and social media. The requests are also tailored to key individuals and relevant time periods may resolve core factual disputes and are proportional. For example, the requests associated with crisis communications individuals who appear to have started their work on behalf of Baldone and Wayfair in 24 are limited in time to a matter of months. In other words, our subpoena requests are for relevant, specific, and important information in this case. And though they don't give, you know, specific details about what they're looking for,

now we kind of get a sense of what they might be looking for. And by the way, during the course of discovery, you don't know exactly what you're going to get. You have an idea of what you're looking for, but who knows what might come from it. Well, from there, Lively's counsel goes into the allegation that Baldoni and Coe did not actually meet in good faith as they claimed. Remember that telephone meeting? They write, quote, it is clear that the Wayfair parties had their letter motion prepared before even meeting and conferring, and they intended to file it regardless of what happened during the meet and confer. On February 14, 2025, at 4 p.m., counsel for the parties participated in a telephonic

conference regarding the Wayfair party's objections that the subpoenas seek substantive communications, which they do not, are overbroad and implicate third-party privacy issues. The lively Reynolds parties repeatedly clarified that the subpoenas seek only non-content data such as call logs and that nothing in the subpoena could fairly be construed as seeking from third parties any substantive communications. Further, the lively Reynolds parties requested legal authority to support the Wayfair Party's position regarding their objections, including their standing to make such objections on behalf of third parties. The lively Reynolds parties additionally offered a number of suggestions to narrow the scope

of the requests, including supplementing the subpoenas to clarify the non-content nature of the request to narrow the applicable timeframes and to limit or withdraw the request for sell site location. Counsel for the Wayfair parties refused to entertain any proposal, instead demanding that the subpoenas be immediately withdrawn in their entirety. Okay, a lot to digest there. In other words, they are arguing essentially, hey, Wayfar, Baldoni, that whole side, you claim our subpoenas are too broad? Well, your requested relief throwing these subpoenas out in their entirety? That is way too broad. And they also call out the Wayfair parties for the fact that they're not seeking a

protective order here. If it's such an issue, why didn't you seek a protective order? In other words, a protective order is an order that prevents certain information from being disclosed or being turned over or dictates the terms on how certain material is turned over, access. It limits the scope of what can be produced during discovery and so forth. But again, you didn't ask for a protective order. The letter continues. The call ended at 431 p.m. Exactly 30 minutes later at 5.01 p.m. Council for the lively Reynolds party's email deposing counsel reiterating the request for legal authority to support the Wayfair Party's position and agreed, as officers of the court, not to access or review any produced materials until the parties completed the meet

and conferred process. And then it says, see a certain exhibit. Exhibit A, counsel for the Wayfair parties did not respond, instead filing their pre-drafted letter motion. At 633 p.m., the Wayfair parties provided notice for the first time that they had already served objections to the subpoenas on the carriers, which of course obviated any risk that the carriers. would produce documents in advance of the compliance date or over the holiday weekend, which fabricated risk was the entire justification for burdening the court with this premature letter request rather than continuing the meet and confer process. And then it also says C, Exhibit B.

So real quick, those exhibits do seem to back that up because you have, I'll give you an example, in one exhibit, there is an email chain about setting up that meeting between the lawyers, and I'm just going to highlight one email in particular. So this email is from Kristen Bender, from the firm that's representing Blake Lively, and this is to Kevin A. Fritz of the firm representing Baldoni, Wayfair, or the other parties. And it reads, quote, hi, Kevin. To reiterate our call just now, we asked you to provide legal authority to support your position with respect to the phone carrier subpoenas.

You refused to do so and said you would provide authority to the court. We are again requesting that you provide such authority to us before, filing anything with the court so that we may meaningfully meet and confer. We do not think that your demand that we immediately withdraw the subpoenas while the meet and confer process is ongoing is appropriate, nor do we anticipate that the just-served carriers will produce the records early prior to the opportunity to review any legal authority for your position. However, to allow for the necessary time to consider any cases you have in support of the

Wayfair party's position in the highly unlikely event that documents are produced in connection with the subpoenas in advance, we can agree as officers of the court not to access or review the materials until the party's meet and confer process is completed. Best, Kristen, again, they're basically saying you keep telling the court that this is a timely emergency situation. We need to resolve it. These carriers are not going to turn over anything immediately after everything's that's been going on. And we won't review anything until we have an honest meeting between us before we have to get the court involved. Now, going back to the letter from Blake Lively's attorney. It reads, the court should also deny the Wayfair

Party's request because the subpoenas seek directly relevant non-content records that are proportional to the needs of the case and no legitimate privilege concerns exists. I already explained what they're thinking these records will show and produce, but then there's this, quote, the Wayfair parties misrepresent both the nature and the scope of the subpoenas, inaccurately stating that they seek spousal communications, medical information, attorney-client communications, among other things, that could infringe on privilege. The requests do not seek the content of any communication, only call, text, and data logs. The lively Reynolds parties have not sought and do not seek here anything other than non-content records as permitted by law. The Wayfair

parties have cited no authority from any court in any jurisdiction to suggest that such subpoenas would be improper. And that's the important point here. So that's different than text messages that were first obtained or seemingly obtained through subpoena at the start of this case where you can see what each party was saying to each other. What they're arguing here is courts have held in the past that this type of information that we're looking for here specifically, namely identifying information or information proving something exists or proving a conversation happened, not the actual content or substance of these communications. This This is not protected by attorney-client privilege or spousal privilege.

It's not the content of the communications. Also, they argue Baldone and Wayfarer, they haven't explained how any of that information that we're looking for implicates medical privacy issues. Is it just they're speculating? And then finally, Lively's counsel addresses one more point. Wayfarer's argument that third party's privacy concerns could be impacted by these subpoenas. But Lively's counsel says that doesn't really work here because Wayfarer and the other parties, Baldoni, they don't have any authority to make that objection. That's up to the third parties to stand up and say so.

They have no claim or interest in those communications. We call that in the law standing. Essentially, they have no standing to make that objection. They're not the ones being potentially harmed or affected by these subpoenas. That's the third parties or the non-parties in this case. case. And Lively's lawyers also argue if Baldoni and Coe had legitimate concerns here, why not move quickly to put a protective order in place? What I mentioned before. The letter concludes for these reasons, the Lively Reynolds parties respectfully request that the court deny the Wayfair

party's motion and allow discovery to proceed. So at the time of this recording, no answer yet from the court, but what will the court decide? Well, look, the court will probably not allow a subpoena as broad as was described by Justin Baldoni's side, if that's really what's going on here, you know, a log of every phone call and text message from someone over, what, two, three years, but maybe try to narrow that. At the same time, perhaps the court will allow discovery of all these 15 people if they are relevant and related to the case and litigation. There seems to be an explanation of what exactly lively is looking for. So maybe somewhere in between. We'll see what shakes up. We'll keep a careful eye on this. Thank you so much for joining

us here on Sidebar as always. And please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.