Blake Lively Must Hand Over Taylor Swift Texts to Justin Baldoni, Says Judge
Text messages between Blake Lively and Taylor Swift about the working environment on the set of It Ends With Us must be turned over to Justin Baldoni, a judge has ruled.
“Given that Lively has represented that Swift had knowledge of complaints or discussions about the working environment on the film, among other issues, the requests for messages with Swift regarding the film and this action are reasonably tailored to discover information that would prove or disprove Lively’s harassment and retaliation claims,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman wrote in Wednesday’s ruling.
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Reps for Baldoni and Swift did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Lively told Rolling Stone in a statement, “The Court outright denied the Wayfarer Parties’ motion to compel documents from Ms. Lively, who has produced far more documents in this case than the Wayfarer Parties combined. Further, the Court’s protective order ruling rests on the Wayfarer Parties’ admission that they received nothing from Taylor Swift, which is exactly the opposite of what their ‘insider’ claimed two weeks ago.”
The statement continued, claiming that “Baldoni’s desire to drag Taylor Swift into this has been constant dating back to August 2024” and referencing a “scenario planning” document from Melissa Nathan’s PR firm, who Baldoni hired, that allegedly referred to Swift as “a bully” and “called for a strategy to influence the ‘TS fanbase.'”
“We will continue to call out Baldoni’s relentless efforts to exploit Ms Swift’s popularity, which from day one has been nothing more than a distraction from the serious sexual harassment and retaliation accusations he and the Wayfarer parties are facing,” the spokesperson said.
In May, Baldoni’s legal team withdrew his subpoena against Swift as part of their ongoing legal battle against Lively. The following month, Lively’s lawyers filed a protective order over “the Wayfarer Parties’ continuing demands for Ms. Lively’s communications with Taylor Swift.”
Just days before, Baldoni was dealt a major blow after Judge Liman dismissed Baldoni’s $400 million lawsuit against the actress, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and publicist Leslie Sloane, as well as threw out a separate $250 million lawsuit against the New York Times. (In December, The New York Times published a story with Lively‘s sexual harassment and smear campaign allegations against Baldoni, which preceded Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni.)
A Lively spokesperson previously told Variety: “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 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.”
However, the judge wrote on Wednesday that despite Lively’s allegation that the Wayfarer Parties are demanding communications with Swift in order to prop up a public relations narrative, “this concern does not justify denying the Wayfarer Parties relevant discovery.”
This story was updated at 6:50 p.m. on June 19 to include a statement fro Lively’s spokesperson.
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