{"id":5834,"date":"2025-05-15T20:37:18","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T20:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/justin-baldonis-blake-lively-taylor-swift-extortion-claim-thrown-out\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T20:37:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T20:37:18","slug":"justin-baldonis-blake-lively-taylor-swift-extortion-claim-thrown-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/justin-baldonis-blake-lively-taylor-swift-extortion-claim-thrown-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Baldoni’s Blake Lively-Taylor Swift Extortion Claim Thrown Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA<\/span> judge has quickly shut down an attempt by Justin Baldoni\u2019s attorney to use the It Ends With Us <\/em>litigation docket to accuse Blake Lively of extorting Taylor Swift, saying the filing is improper and \u201ctransparently invites a press uproar\u201d without providing any relevant information for the federal court case.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe order, which came down from Judge Lewis J. Liman on Thursday (May 15), strikes Baldoni lawyer Bryan Freedman<\/strong>\u2019s letter from just one day earlier in which he claimed that an unnamed source told him Lively had asked Swift to delete text messages and threatened to release private communications unless the pop star voiced public support for her sexual harassment and retaliation claims against Baldoni.<\/p>\n

\n\tLively\u2019s legal team was quick to deny the allegations as \u201ccategorically false\u201d and \u201ccompletely untethered from reality,\u201d saying such claims have no place on the court docket. Judge Liman agreed a few hours later, writing that Freedman\u2019s letter \u201cis improper and must be stricken.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe sole purpose of the letter is to promote public scandal by advancing inflammatory accusations, on information and belief, against Lively and her counsel,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cIt transparently invites a press uproar by suggesting that Lively and her counsel attempted to \u2018extort\u2019 a well-known celebrity. Retaining the letter on the docket would be of no use to the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJudge Liman wrote that under governing case law from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, federal court dockets should not be \u201cco-opted\u201d to \u201cpromote scandal arising out of unproven, potentially libelous statements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCounsel is advised that future misuse of the court\u2019s docket may be met with sanctions,\u201d Judge Liman wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tLively\u2019s representatives celebrated the decision Thursday, with a spokesperson for the actress saying in a statement, \u201cIt took the court less than 24 hours to see through Mr. Freedman\u2019s irrelevant, improper and inflammatory accusations, strike them, remove them from the court and warn Mr. Freedman that further misconduct may be met with sanctions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFreedman did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling.<\/p>\n

\n\tSwift\u2019s reps have not commented on the Lively extortion accusations, but they forcefully criticized Baldoni last week for dragging the pop superstar into the It Ends With Us<\/em> litigation by way of a subpoena. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, \u2018My Tears Ricochet,\u2019\u201d said Swift\u2019s spokesperson at the time. \u201cGiven that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift\u2019s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLively alleges in the case that Baldoni, her co-star and director on the movie released last summer, sexually harassed her on set and then orchestrated a public relations smear campaign to retaliate against her after she complained.<\/p>\n

\n\tSwift was brought into the fray when Baldoni countersued Lively for defamation and claimed that the actress leveraged her relationship with a \u201cmegacelebrity friend,\u201d presumed to be Swift, to bully her way into more control of It Ends With Us<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBaldoni\u2019s legal filing included text messages concerning an alleged meeting attended by \u201cRyan and Taylor,\u201d seemingly referencing Swift and Lively\u2019s husband, Ryan Reynolds. In one message sent by Lively, the actress called Swift and Reynolds her \u201cmost trusted partners\u201d and compared them to the \u201cdragons\u201d in the show Game of Thrones<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe message could not have been clearer,\u201d Baldoni\u2019s lawyers wrote in the countersuit. \u201cBaldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively\u2019s \u2018dragons,\u2019 two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A judge has quickly shut down an attempt by Justin Baldoni\u2019s attorney to use the It Ends With Us litigation docket to accuse Blake Lively of extorting Taylor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5951,4554,786,5953,2001,5952,3029,4373],"class_list":["post-5834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-baldonis","tag-blake","tag-claim","tag-extortion","tag-justin","tag-livelytaylor","tag-swift","tag-thrown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}