Justin Baldoni is pushing back against Blake Lively‘s request to be deposed in her lawyer’s office ahead of their upcoming sexual assault trial.
It comes after the 37-year-old actress expressed concern that Baldoni’s attorneys will try to make her sworn testimony a ‘public spectacle.’
The 41-year-old filmmaker hit back by arguing, via his lawyer Bryan Freedman, that Blake has not supported her claim with evidence.
According to TMZ, Baldoni’s defense team believes holding the deposition at Lively’s lawyer’s office puts them at a disadvantage.
Alternatively, they’ve proposed to hold the proceedings at their office, which is only a mile away.
Justin’s lawyer cited the potential need to consult with his hundreds of pages of notes and to use a conference room to speak in private.
Justin Baldoni is pushing back against Blake Lively’s request to be deposed in her lawyer’s office ahead of their upcoming sexual assault trial; pictured in May 2024
The actor claims Lively is using her ‘celebrity status’ to gain an upper hand at the deposition. It comes after the actress, 37, expressed concern that Baldoni’s attorneys will try to make her sworn testimony a ‘public spectacle’; pictured in June
The two sides are preparing to face off in court after they clashed while filming It Ends With Us last year.
Baldoni’s side wrote in the filing, ‘Although Lively’s foot-stomping and use of her celebrity status may have enabled her to seize control of the film, which is the crux of this dispute, her counsel’s tantrum has no place in this Court. Lively is bound by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure like every litigant.’
Lively is preparing to answer tough questions from Baldoni’s legal team as she tries to nail down a venue for the deposition.
Her legal team is hoping to schedule the deposition at a New York City location that will minimize publicity amid the whirlwind trial.
The proposed venue’s exact address was redacted in Friday court filings obtained by DailyMail.
In a moment of snark, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan previously told TMZ that Lively’s deposition should be live-streamed to an audience at Madison Square Garden.
Freedman’s suggestion, which Lively’s attorney shot down as a publicity-seeking distraction, was to sell tickets to the event and donate the proceeds to domestic violence victims.
In a moment of snark, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan previously said that Lively’s deposition should be live-streamed to an audience at Madison Square Garden; pictured in May
Lively and Baldoni butted heads while filming the romantic drama last year, and things turned litigious in December when the Gossip Girl alum sued the actor for alleged sexual harassing and engineering a retaliatory smear campaign against her
Lively is preparing to answer tough questions from Baldoni’s legal team as she tries to nail down a venue for the deposition
In June, Lively suffered a setback in the case when a judge denied her attorneys’ application for a protective order seeking to block her text messages with Taylor Swift from being entered as evidence.
Baldoni’s team subpoenaed Lively for text messages, emails and any other messages between her and Swift.
His lawyers have subsequently been allowed to pore through the text trail, with all communications related to It Ends With Us set for scrutiny.
In one embarrassing text exchange, Lively appeared to refer to herself as the Game of Thrones character Khaleesi, and to Swift as one of her ‘dragons.’
Elsewhere in Baldoni’s filing is the claim that Swift was present at a meeting convened by Lively at her New York penthouse to discuss It Ends With Us script changes.
Sources close to Swift insisted the singer had no knowledge of the meeting and simply arrived to find it underway.
The situation reportedly left Swift — who is godmother to Lively’s three daughters — feeling ‘exploited’ by her friend of ten years.
