Blake Lively asked a judge Friday to close the door on discovery related to Taylor Swift in her ongoing legal battle with her “It End With Us” co-star and director Justin Baldoni.
In a new motion, Lively’s attorneys asked the judge to block Baldoni’s lawyers from obtaining communications between Lively and Swift, saying they are irrelevant to the case.
Baldoni’s lawyers previously subpoenaed Swift and her lawyers. They dropped the subpoenas last month after Swift’s attorney objected to an “unwarranted fishing expedition.”
Lively’s side is now seeking to exclude Swift from the dispute once and for all, arguing that Baldoni’s team has simply used Swift’s name to generate tabloid fodder without a legitimate legal purpose.
Baldoni was hit with a major setback on Monday, when Judge Lewis Liman dismissed his defamation and extortion suit against Lively and the New York Times. That suit included some references to Swift, alleging that the pop star had taken Lively’s side in a creative dispute about the movie and that Lively had once called the superstar one of her “dragons.”
What’s left of the case is Lively’s harassment and retaliation suit against Baldoni and others at Wayfarer Studios. Lively has alleged that Baldoni and his publicists orchestrated a smear campaign against her after she complained about sexual misconduct on the set of the film.
“The only allegations in this action that were ever remotely relevant to Ms. Swift were in the Wayfarer Parties’ now dismissed complaint,” wrote Lively’s attorney, Esra Hudson, on Friday. “Ms. Swift is not mentioned a single time in Ms. Lively’s amended complaint.”
Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, previously alleged that he had heard from an unnamed source that Lively urged Swift to delete their text messages. That allegation was included in a filing that has since been stricken from the court record, after the judge said it was irrelevant to the case.
When Baldoni’s team dropped the subpoenas of Swift and her lawyer, it was reported that they had “got exactly what they were seeking” and therefore did not need to pursue the subpoenas.
Lively’s side published an email from Swift’s attorney that seemed to contradict that.
“No documents are being produced and no deposition is being scheduled,” wrote the attorney, Doug Baldridge, in an email to the lawyers on the Baldoni-Lively case. Baldridge had filed a motion to quash the subpoena, but agreed to drop it once the subpoenas were withdrawn.
Lively’s lawyers note that if Baldoni’s side did in fact receive something from Swift’s team, it hasn’t been turned over to their own side.
“The ongoing attempts to once again try and use the world’s biggest star as a PR tactic in this matter reflects a public unraveling of epic proportions,” a Lively spokesperson said, “and serves only to distract from the fact that Justin Baldoni’s lawsuits against Ms. Lively, Ryan Reynolds, their publicist, and the New York Times have been entirely dismissed.”
variety.com
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