Justin Baldoni’s lawyers slammed Blake Lively’s legal team as they are seeking phone records amid their ongoing legal drama.
As per Us Weekly, court documents revealed that a letter was submitted to the judge on February 14th by Mitchell Schuster, who acts on behalf of Baldoni, aged 41, and his production company, Wayfarer Studios.
The letter criticized Lively’s legal representatives for sending subpoenas to various cell phone companies in search of records of calls or text messages involving “each of the individual Wayfarer Parties” and “various non-party individuals.” It was stated that Lively’s attorneys asked for “call logs, text logs, data logs, and cell site location information.”
The letter expressed concern over the extensive and intrusive nature of these subpoenas. It highlighted the fact that this is a civil case and not a criminal one, emphasizing that the Lively Parties are not akin to the FBI. Despite this, the subpoenas request not only complete call and text histories spanning years without regard to sender, receiver, or content but also real-time location details and data logs encompassing web browsing history.
Schuster argued that the move “grossly” exceeds “the scope of permissible discovery.” While Baldoni’s team does not object to the use of third-party discovery tools by both sides, they are advocating that it is done so in a “legally permissible fashion.”
“The Wayfarer Parties are deeply concerned that the Lively Parties are intimidating third parties into providing information about our clients (and various non-parties) far beyond what is appropriate (or even legal) in civil litigation, including spousal communications, medical information, attorney-client communications, and real-time location information, among other things,” Schuster wrote. “The Subpoenas constitute a flagrant abuse of the discovery process and, if allowed to stand, set a precedent that — once their bluster dissipates — we are confident the Lively Parties’ counsel will not be prepared to accept when it comes to the scope of discovery into their own clients’ private information and communications.”
Baldoni’s legal team claimed that they “conferred” with Lively’s side over the subpoenas but the parties were “unable to resolve the dispute.” Schuster asked the judge to weigh in on the “highly time-sensitive” matter as some “cellular providers have already indicated they intend to comply with the subpoenas.”
Lively, 37, and Baldoni’s legal battle kicked off after the pair starred in the 2024 film It Ends With Us. In December 2024, Lively filed a lawsuit against Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment, emotional distress and more. Baldoni denied the allegations and filed a defamation suit for $400 million against Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and her publicist Leslie Sloane.
Us confirmed on Friday that Lively’s team had subpoenaed the phone records of Baldoni, film producer Jamey Heath and Wayfarer Studios’ Steve Sarowitz in an attempt to find evidence of a smear campaign against the actress.
“Phone records belonging to all of the individual defendants will expose the full web of individuals who were involved in the smear campaign against Ms. Lively,” a representative for Lively said in a statement to Us. “Such records will provide critical and irrefutable evidence not only about who, but also about when, where, and how their retaliation plan came together and operated.”
Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, told Us in a response that “subpoenas are an ordinary part of the litigation.”
“What is extraordinary is what the Lively Parties are seeking. They are asking for every single call, text, data log, and even real-time location information for the past 2.5 years, regardless of the sender, recipient, or subject matter,” he continued in a statement. “This massive fishing expedition demonstrates that they are desperately seeking any factual basis for their provably false claims. They will find none.”
