Blake Lively just scored a small victory in her ongoing battle with Justin Baldoni.
Judge Lewis J. Liman has signed off on the actress’ motion to strike the claims that her lead attorney, Mike Gottlieb, allegedly threatened to release Taylor Swift’s private text messages if the singer didn’t publicly support Lively in the “It Ends With Us” legal war, The Post can confirm.
Her motion was granted on Thursday, May 15, just hours after Gottlieb shot down the accusations, which Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, claimed came from an anonymous source.
“It took the court less than 24 hours to see through Mr. Freedman’s irrelevant, improper and inflammatory accusations, strike them, remove them from the court and warn Mr. Freedman that further misconduct may be met with sanctions,” a spokesperson for Lively told The Post.
On Wednesday, the “A Simple Favor” star’s legal team filed a motion demanding that Freedman’s letter to the judge with the damning allegations be stricken from the court.
Judge Liman agreed, calling the legal filing “improper” and “irrelevant” to the case in the document obtained by The Post.
“The motion is made pursuant to the Court’s inherent power to prevent abusive or improper
use of its docket,” the doc read.
The order found that the sole purpose of the letter was to “promote public scandal by advancing inflammatory accusations, on information and belief, against Lively and her counsel,” adding the document invited a “press uproar by suggesting that Lively and her counsel attempted to ‘extort’ a well-known celebrity.”
Judge Liman made it clear that “retaining the Letter on the docket would be of no use to the Court and would allow the Court’s docket to serve as a ‘reservoir[] of libelous statements for press consumption.’”
The Post reached out to Freedman for comment.
Baldoni’s attorney made waves when he claimed that not only did Gottlieb allegedly threatened to expose Swift’s texts if the singer didn’t support Lively in public but that Blake also asked Taylor to delete their messages.
Gottlieb immediately denounced those accusations, calling them “categorically false.”
“We unequivocally deny all of these so-called allegations, which are cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources, and completely untethered from reality,” he told The Post on Wednesday.
“This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer parties’ lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process. We will imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here.”
Lively sued Baldoni in December, claiming he sexually harassed her on the set of “It Ends With Us” and launched a smear campaign against her.
Baldoni, who served as the film’s director and Lively’s co-star, countersued the actress and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, for $400 million, accusing the couple of defamation, civil extortion, false light invasion of privacy, and more.
Swift was recently subpoenaed as a witness in the “It Ends With Us” legal war.
The Grammy winner is the godmother of Lively and Reynolds’ three daughters and was mentioned several times in Baldoni’s countersuit.
He claimed the “Bad Blood” singer and Reynolds were present for a pivotal meeting between him and Lively at the A-list pair’s New York penthouse.
In the countersuit, Baldoni also alleged that Lively called herself Khaleesi from “Game of Thrones” and referred to Reynolds and Swift as “my dragons” in a text exchange with him.
Both Baldoni and Lively deny each other’s claims.
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see ‘It Ends With Us’ until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” a representative for the pop superstar told The Post in response to the subpoena.
Lively and Baldoni’s trial is set for March 2026.
