Five months after Blake Lively filed her sexual harassment and retaliation complaint with California’s Civil Rights Department against her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios and inner circle, a previously unrevealed subpoena seeking lawsuit from the actress peels back some of the questions about when she knew about an alleged online smear campaign against her, and how did she know it?
In partial response, we now know that Lively gain the info in the late summer and early fall of last year in a targeted shadow suit of sorts, and the information came from Joneswork boss Stephanie Jones.
Eventually revealing a treasure trove of what look on the surface like incriminating and unpalatable texts and other correspondence from Baldoni’s Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel-led PR team, the September 27 filing has been kept under the radar until the past week. Lively’s name nor that of spouse Ryan Reynolds doesn’t appear anywhere on the New York state court suit against 10 unnamed “Does.” Instead, the plaintiff is a “Vanzan,” a company we now know formed in Delaware in 2010 with Lively as the CEO and every other officer.
“The DOE Defendants have undertaken direct efforts to contravene these agreements and instead have participated, and may continue to participate, in efforts to harm Plaintiff, including by: failing to act in Plaintiff’s best interests, taking actions to their personal benefit at Plaintiff’s expense, failing to freely communicate with Plaintiff regarding matters that impact Plaintiff’s business and reputation, and disclosing to third parties and failing to keep strictly confidential Plaintiff’s confidential and/or private information,” says the complaint from Manatt, Phelp & Phillips, who are one of the firms representing Lively, Reynolds and their PR chief Leslie Sloane in the open suits against Baldoni and his inner circle.
While has long since been insisted by Jones and Team Blake that Abel’s former boss handed over her ex-Joneswork right-handed lady’s cell and other devices upon receiving a subpoena request from Lively’s lawyers, the origin of that subpoena has never been known. In fact, Baldoni lead attorney Bryan Freedman has in the past as the legal conflict between the It Ends With Us stars has enlarged and become more bitter openly doubted the existence of such a subpoena.
With a clear tone of more to come, Freedman’s not doubting that subpoena anymore. Nor what it all means.
“Ms. Lively’s and Mr. Reynolds’ company Vanzan had nothing to do with this case and they knew it,” Freedman told Deadline today. “This sham lawsuit was designed to obtain subpoena power without oversight or scrutiny, and in doing so denied my clients the ability to contest the propriety, nature, and scope of the subpoena.
Having filed more than his fair share of Doe suits over the years and taken slings and arrows for his tactics, Freedman added Monday: “There is nothing normal about this. Officers of the court have a duty of candor to the court and an obligation not to file fictitious lawsuits that have no basis in fact or law. A party with no connection to these proceedings asserting a breach of contract against another party they claim not to be able to identify does not qualify. This was done in bad faith and constitutes a flagrant abuse of process.”
On the other side, Lively’s primary lawyers, Esra Hudson, and Mike Gottlieb not only acknowledge the Doe lawsuit but strongly assert it as above board and the best way to get to the heart of the online attacks on their client that marred the summer 2024 premiere of the domestic violence themed IEWU.
“There is nothing untoward here—just conscientious and thorough investigation,” the duo tells Deadline.
“The Lively parties acted upon reliable information, and employed common tools such as Doe lawsuits and civil subpoenas that are entirely lawful and appropriate for pursuing claims and uncovering the identity of unknown perpetrators of unlawful activities, Hudson and Gottlieb go on to say, pointing out what the result was. “This lawsuit unearthed the Wayfarer Parties’ documented plan – in their own words, in their own text messages—to “destroy” Blake Lively, a plan which they executed without transparency, disclosure, or notice to Ms. Lively or the public, instead acting in a way they thought would be ‘untraceable’. We have absolutely nothing to hide – Ms. Lively voluntarily disclosed the subpoena in her first filing knowing that it would ultimately be produced to the Wayfarer Parties in discovery, and that is precisely what will happen as Ms. Lively’s claims move forward in the proper litigation process.”
In a now deleted Facebook post not long after Lively took the sexual harassment and smear campaign allegations public, Abel admitted she and Nathan “were prepared for it, as it’s our job to be ready for any scenario, but we didn’t have to implement anything, because the internet was doing the work for us” attacking the Gossip Girl vet. Still, the attacks on Lively last year were reminiscent of the successful online vilification of Amber Heard during Johnny Depp’s 2022 Nathan-assisted $50 million defamation case against the Aquaman star. In the immediate fallout in this case, as well as public staining, Lively also saw a IEWU premiere timed launched of hair and liquor products damaged by the online attacks, a first for the lucrative A Simple Favor star.
Blake Lively attends It Ends With Us event on August 08, 2024 in London, UK. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
With the multimillion-dollar case set for a March 9, 2026 trial start date, Lively, Deadpool’s Reynolds, Sloane and the New York Times (who published its Nathan and Abel text heavy ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine exposé one day after Lively’s December 20 CRD filing) are all trying to get themselves dismissed from WME-dumbed and career destroyed Baldoni’s $400 million defamation and extortion suit. Wrapped in the First Amendment, it looks pretty certain the Grey Lady will soon be allowed out of the case that’s in Judge Lewis J. Liman’s courtroom.
To Jones, who has her own suit with Abel, we don’t know yet how Lively’s team learned about the material that she had in her possession, though it seems there was some knowledge gleamed in late August. What we do know is that how that knowledge was gleamed will come out in declarations and testimony by Jones in the court case.
We also know that Jones received that Doe subpoena on October 1.
Naming Lively, Reynolds, various companies and entities of the couple’s, the subpoena “concerns, refers, relates and applies to any and all electronic records, data, documents, and communications in Your possession, custody or control collected from a cellular telephone containing the requested information” from December 1, 2022 onward. That material was handed over not long afterwards and the Vanzan suit was withdrawn on December 19, one day before Lively’s filing with the Golden State’s Civil Rights Department.
There is no doubt that the subpoena to Jones, who was losing one of her key employees and more than a few clients as Abel opened her own PR shop, saw a plethora of communications that certainly indicated a coordinated attack on Lively to preempt any revelations about alleged misconduct by Baldoni.
Mindful of this latest twist, perhaps it is would not be a bad idea to remember the words of Judge Liman back in early March when he cautioned lawyers on all side to put this “feud between PR firms” in context.
The Daily Mail were first to report the Vanzan lawsuit fling
