Blake Lively has suffered a blow in her defamation battle with Justin Baldoni today after a judge blocked her efforts to make him surrender more than two years’ worth of texts and call data.
Lively, 37, subpoenaed her It Ends With Us co-star for ‘documents concerning ingoing and outgoing calls or text messages … within the time period of December 1, 2022 to the present’.
The itemized demands included ‘call logs, text logs, data logs, and cell site location information.’
But a New York court agreed with Baldoni, 41, that the actress’s discovery request was ‘overly intrusive and disproportionate’ in a ruling Friday obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.
Federal Judge Lewis Liman said the trove of data would be so vast it could include communications with nonparties or sensitive information related to doctors and psychologists.
He also questioned why Lively needed texts dating back more than two years to prove that Baldoni and staff from his Wayfarer production company started to harass her in 2024.
surrounding the stormy production of their summer hit, It Ends with Us. Pictured last summer on the Today show
Lively in December sued Baldoni amid claims of sexual harassment during production of the motion picture, which was a hit when it arrived in theaters in August
‘Lively mainly argues that the Subpoenas will help to identify “the larger network of individuals” who perpetuated a negative media campaign against her,’ he remarked.
‘But 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.’
Judge Liman told mom-of-four Lively to rework her subpoenas but didn’t quash them entirely.
Baldoni’s lawyers wanted to stop her from asking third parties for similar discovery materials but Liman tossed that argument.
‘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,’ he said in a six-page filing.
The ruling comes months into the bitter legal war between Lively and Baldoni, whose on-screen chemistry nonetheless made their 2024 adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s acclaimed novel It Ends With Us a box office hit.
Lively appeared to be in good spirits amid her return to the limelight at 30 Rockefeller Plaza on February 16 in NYC for SNL50
Lively kicked off hostilities with a California civil rights complaint and subsequent federal lawsuit, claiming he had entered her trailer while she was topless, showed her graphic video of his wife giving birth and bit and sucked on her lips during an improvised kissing scene.
She further accused her co-star of smearing her reputation when she objected to the abuse, citing a text message from Baldoni’s publicist Melissa Nathan which read: ‘We can bury anyone.’
Lively’s bombshell claims made global headlines thanks to the near-simultaneous publication of a 4,000-word New York Times expose that quoted heavily from the civil rights complaint.
Baldoni countersued Lively and her Hollywood actor husband Reynolds, turning the spat on its head by claiming it was their team doing the smearing and asking for $400 million in damages.
He accused her of twisting the meaning of his texts and emails and working in tandem with Leslie Sloane, a powerful Hollywood publicist, to plant damaging stories about him in the media.
It was all a ploy, Baldoni argued, to rebuild Lively’s reputation after she came in for criticism for being prickly and difficult in interviews and promotional events.
Any negative publicity surrounding his blonde leading lady had arisen ‘organically’, his suit contends.
Baldoni also sued The Times for $250 million, claiming it ‘relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims.’
The newspaper says it plans to ‘vigorously defend’ itself
The studio ‘seemingly’ prioritized Lively’s morale over Baldoni’s, as her star power both individually, and as a tandem with Reynolds, was viewed as essential to marketing the late summer hit. The power couple pictured at the NYC premiere of It Ends With Us in August
Baldoni’s team earlier this month released a website which includes private communications such as text messages that were included in court filings detailing his interactions with the Hollywood power couple over the making of romantic drama.
He claimed in court filings they made efforts made to usurp and undermine his input as the director of It Ends with Us.
Baldoni’s team previously said that the communications shared in court filings on the website – which already has fans talking – makes things clear about the motives of both parties, marking the latest chapter in the feud between the It Ends with Us headliners.
The website, which is live online at thelawsuitinfo.com, comes amid a spate of high-profile litigation between the collaborators on the film, which was a hit at the box office last August.
The site went live days prior to the first hearing, ahead of a trial with a starting date of March 9, 2026.
Lively filed an 80-page civil rights complaint with the California Civil Rights Department against Baldoni December 20, before officially filing a federal lawsuit on December 31.
Lively in December sued Baldoni amid claims of sexual harassment during production of the motion picture. In her lawsuit, the Gossip Girl alum accused Baldoni of sexually harassing her in multiple ways – including body shaming her – and orchestrating a smear campaign against her to damage her reputation.
Baldoni and his reps have said in response to the lawsuit that Lively twisted the meaning of text messages and mislead the public about their interactions while making the motion picture.
In her lawsuit, Lively named a number of Baldoni’s collaborators, including his company Wayfarer Studios, the studio’s CEO and financial backer, and PR personnel Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel.
‘I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted,’ Lively told the Times the day after she filed the complaint.