A judge has ruled whether to grant Blake Lively a stronger protective order amid her lawsuit against It Ends With Us costar Justin Baldoni.
According to court documents obtained by Us Weekly on Thursday, March 13, Judge Lewis Liman approved Lively’s protective order in part, rejecting some of Wayfarer’s requests.
“Today, the Court rejected the Wayfarer Parties’ objections and entered the protections needed to ensure the free flow of discovery material without any risk of witness intimidation or harm to any individual’s security,” a spokesperson for Lively told Us in a statement. “With this order in place, Ms. Lively will move forward in the discovery process to obtain even more of the evidence that will prove her claims in Court.”
The court chose to “enter a protective order with a modified Attorneys’ Eyes Only provision,” meaning that certain documents would only be allowed to go between the clients’ attorneys and not be seen my said client unless ruled upon by a judge.
Blake Lively reportedly requested a protective order in light of her and It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni’s ongoing legal battle. Lively, 37, and husband Ryan Reynolds submitted a letter to a judge on Thursday, February 20, Us Weekly can confirm, to ask for a stronger protective order than the one they were granted. (Lively […]
Baldoni’s attorneys also responded to the latest ruling. “We are fully in agreement with the Court’s decision to provide a narrow scope of protections to categories such as private mental health records and personal security measures that have never been of interest to us,” lawyer Bryan Freedman told Us in a statement on Thursday. “As opposed to Ms. Lively’s exceedingly over broad demand for documents for a 2 [and a half] year period of time which the court rightly quashed.”
That statement continued: “We remain focused on the necessary communications that will directly contradict Ms. Lively’s unfounded accusations. We will oppose any efforts by Ms. Lively and her team to hamper our clients’ ability to defend against her attacks by incorrectly categorizing important information as ‘trade secrets,’ especially considering there were no issues in providing these communications willingly to The New York Times.”
News broke last month that Lively, 37, and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, sought a stronger protective order than the standard one they were initially granted when she and Baldoni, 41, each first filed their respective lawsuits.
In a new filing obtained by Us Weekly, Blake Lively is firing back after being accused of trying to “prevent the public” from seeing “relevant evidence” in her legal battle against Justin Baldoni. Following Lively’s recent request for an improved protective order — which asked for an “Attorney’s Eyes Only” stipulation to keep certain information […]
“As detailed in Ms. Lively’s Amended Complaint, Ms. Lively, her family, other members of the cast, various fact witnesses, and individuals that have spoken out publicly in support of Ms. Lively have received violent, profane, sexist, and threatening communications,” a February letter from Lively and Reynolds, 48, read, noting Lively was seeking “additional protections.”
Lively had named Baldoni in a December 2024 lawsuit, alleging that he sexually harassed her and fostered a “hostile work environment” on the set of that year’s It Ends With Us. Lively amended her complaint in February, detailing the alleged “emotional impact” she faced including the multiple, violent social media messages she received.
Baldoni vehemently and frequently denied Lively’s claims, also filing a $400 million defamation lawsuit against Lively and Reynolds. The married couple, meanwhile, denounced his accusations.
Lively and Baldoni’s legal teams both met with the judge on March 6 to discuss the proposed protective order.
We want to stop the public publication of this information, in the case, during discovery. The rules try and prevent the burden to be on the third parties,” the actress’ lawyer said during Thursday’s hearing. “We should not make the dozens of third parties run to the court for protection. We are supposed to reduce the burden on third parties. He should drop the third-party subpoena against the security firm that protects Lively and Reynolds.”
The lawyer further made a case for protecting Lively’s private correspondence with other “high-profile individuals.”
“There is a significant chance of irreparable harm if marginal conversations with high-profile individuals with no relevance to the case were to fall into the wrong hands,” Lively’s attorney claimed.
Freedman, a lawyer for Baldoni, denied the allegations in his own statement before the judge.
“These are matters of ‘for attorney’s eyes only’ restrictions,” he said on March 6. “This is a case where no one has any intention of harming Ms. Lively in any way. She detailed the sexual harassment claims and put that out there. My clients have been adjudicated as guilty right when this was filed. My client has a right to fight back and to defend himself. We want to agree to the protective order and place the burden on the party, who wants greater protection, to go to court and be transparent.”
