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New York Judge Lewis Liman has partially granted Blake Lively‘s subpoena for two years of call and text logs from Justin Baldoni, his public relations team, and employees of his production company Wayfarer Studios. The actress will have to narrow down her request after it was ruled that some of her requests, particularly in relation to Wayfarer Studios, were “overly intrusive and disproportionate to the needs of the case.”
“This request implicates legitimate privacy interests,” Liman said. “Even though Lively has narrowed her request to exclude the content of calls or messages, the phone records themselves would still contain sensitive information regarding which doctors, psychologists, or even acquaintances the Wayfarer parties spoke to, and when.”
Lively’s request spanned phone records from December 2022 through the present. “Lively mainly argues that the subpoenas will help to identify ‘the larger network of individuals’ who perpetuated a negative media campaign against her,” Liman said. The judge challenged the relevance of the full span of time, noting that “according to Lively’s complaint, this negative campaign did not begin until approximately August 2024. It is therefore unclear how communications to and from Wayfarer Parties in 2022 and 2023 would reveal individuals who participated in the campaign.”
As Lively narrows down her request, she will still be allowed to subpoena non-parties, a decision that dismisses Baldoni’s request for the exclusion of non-parties. “The Wayfarer Parties may assert a privacy interest in their own phone records, but they have not provided any basis for asserting an interest in the communications of non-parties,” Liman said.
Despite this, legal representatives for Baldoni are considering the mixed ruling a win. “The Court put a stop to Ms. Lively’s egregious attempt to invade our clients’ privacy,” Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman said, per Variety. “No matter how the Lively Parties may try to spin this decision, the Court saw their efforts for what they really are: a desperate fishing expedition intended to salvage their debunked claims long after they already savaged our clients’ reputations in the New York Times.”
Livelysued Baldoni in December, as well as It Ends With Us producer James Heath, Wayfarer Studios, Wayfarer co-founder Steve Sarowitz, and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel. She alleged that Baldoni sexually harassed her on set, and that he and the other co-defendants engaged in a smear campaign against her. Baldoni has since sued Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds for $400 million,alleging that they tried to “destroy” him with a smear campaign. He alsosued theNew York TImes,which broke the story of Lively’s legal action.
