Justin Baldoni Files Libel Lawsuit Against New York Times Over Blake Lively Story
Fallout from an alleged campaign to smear Blake Lively over the filming of It Ends With Us has sparked another lawsuit, this time against The New York Times for libel.
Justin Baldoni, in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday, accuses the Times of conspiring with Lively’s public relations team to advance an “unverified and self-serving narrative” using “cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context” while ignoring evidence that contradicted her claims. He seeks at least $250 million and brings claims related to fraud and breach of contract, as well as libel.
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“In this vicious smear campaign fully orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative,” said Bryan Freedman, a lawyer for Baldoni and his public relations team, in a statement. “In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story, and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revitalize Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public. The irony is rich.”
Additional lawsuits will be filed against “those individuals who have abused their power to try and destroy the lives of my clients,” added Freedman, who noted that evidence of communications backing up Baldoni’s claims will be provided. “The public will decide for themselves as they did when this first began.”
The Times, in a statement, denied the allegations and said that its story was “meticulously and responsibly reported.” It stressed that the report was “based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article” and that Baldoni has “not pointed to a single error.”
In a statement, Lively’s attorneys said “nothing in this lawsuit changed anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint, filed earlier today.” The statement continued, “This lawsuit is based on the obviously false premise that Ms. Lively’s administrative complaint against Wayfarer and others was a ruse based on a choice ‘not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer,’ and that ‘litigation was never her ultimate goal.’ As demonstrated by the federal complaint filed by Ms. Lively earlier today, that frame of reference for the Wayfarer lawsuit is false.”
Baldoni’s lawsuit follows a separate complaint from Stephanie Jones, a former publicist for Baldoni, who accused the actor and director of breaching their contract after she was allegedly forced out of representing him and his production company amid concerns that Lively would go public with her accusations. It was filed days after a legal action from Lively with the California Civil Rights Department, believed to be a precursor to a lawsuit, against Baldoni; his film studio, Wayfarer and the public relations representatives, Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, both of whom are alleged to have helped orchestrate the effort to undermine the actress and are named as plaintiffs in Tuesday’s lawsuit against the Times.
The dispute has ensnared the who’s who of the Hollywood public relations machinery. Lively’s complaint included troves of excerpts of text messages and emails that she obtained through a subpoena of Jonesworks. The messages came from a company phone used by Abel, who left the company earlier this year to start her own operation.
The messages detailed in Lively’s complaint include a key exchange where Abel pushes the crisis public relations team, “I think you guys need to be tough and show the strength of what you guys can do in these scenarios. [Baldoni] wants to feel like she can be buried.” To which Nathan replied, “Of course — but you know when we send over documents we can’t send over the work we will or could do because that could get us in a lot of trouble. We can’t write we will destroy her. Imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands. You know we can bury anyone.”
Also in the Times‘ report were accusations from Lively that Baldoni repeatedly entered her makeup trailer while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding. Responding to the accusations, Baldoni stresses that he was invited into her trailer.
“I’m just pumping in my trailer if you wanna work out our lines,” Lively texted to Baldoni, according to an except of their communications attached to the complaint.
Baldoni responded, “Copy, eating with crew and will head that way.”
Additionally, the Times reported of an incident in which producer Jamey Heath allegedly engaged in misconduct on the set of the film by showing Lively a video of his naked wife. Denying allegations of sexual harassment, Heath, who’s also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, says that the video was a nonpornographic recording of his wife giving birth. Lively was shown the video as part of a creative discussion in preparation for a birthing scene in the movie, the complaint says.
The lawsuit accuses the publication of disregarding evidence that contradicted Lively’s claims. “Even a cursory investigation by the Times would have exposed the baseless nature of Lively’s allegations and the lack of factual support for her narrative,” Freedman writes in the complaint.
The lawsuit also details the lead-up to the Times publishing the bombshell report. Baldoni’s publicists, Abel of RWA Communications and Nathan of The Agency Group, were allegedly only given 14 hours to respond before it ran the story on Dec. 21. After they denied Lively’s allegations, they say that the publication disregarded an “abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives.”
Baldoni alleges Lively initially didn’t file a formal lawsuit because it “would have derailed her true objective: an orchestrated campaign to rehabilitate her public image.” (Lively formally filed a lawsuit against Baldoni on Tuesday in New York federal court, more than a week after her initial complaint.)
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