An expert lawyer has spoken about a Justin Baldoni clause that could lead to him paying Blake Lively a massive sum in court.
The high profile blowout between the pair of celebrities continues to play out in the media, with an upcoming deposition set to see Lively face off with Baldoni’s legal team.
This comes just weeks after Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit against Lively’s sexual harassment lawsuit was dismissed.
Baldoni continues to deny all of Lively’s claims, which suggest that he sexually harassed her while filming It Ends With Us and engaged in a pre-emptive smear campaign against her.
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The pair’s public blow out is the focus of a brand-new documentary coming out next week titled Lively vs Baldoni: The Hollywood Feud, featuring interviews with people close to both sides of the lawsuit.
Included in the documentary is an interview with domestic abuse lawyer Lisa Bloom, who speaks about why Baldoni could be forced to pay massive sums in court if he is found to have carried out a smear campaign against Lively.
One of the big focuses discussed in the documentary is a list of 30 demands that Lively made upon her return to work on It Ends with Us alongside director and co-star Baldoni.
She made a number of claims, including that she was to stop being shown pornography on set, there was to be no improvised intimacy, and that he was not to engage in retaliatory behaviour.
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Whilst the Baldoni side claim that these came as a shock and that these were rules already being followed, Lively claims that she was forced to make these demands as Baldoni made her uncomfortable.
Baldoni ultimately signed this agreement, however, something Bloom said could spell trouble for him if he is found to have engaged in a smear campaign against her.
She said: “This is the kind of thing that can really lead to punitive damages. If Blake Lively wins her case, Justin Baldoni agreed in writing, there will be no retaliation.”
Bloom is referring specifically to text messages between Baldoni’s PR crisis team, specifically Melissa Nathan, in which she states they can ‘bury’ her.
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While Baldoni’s team claims these are taken out of context, Bloom states that his agreement to her return to work terms, which include an agreement that there will be no retaliation, could spell a major payday for Lively.
She goes on to say: “At this point, she had not said anything publicly about him. She had tried to resolve it all quietly, just among the people on the set so they could finish the movie, and they did.”
The domestic abuse lawyer describes the accused conduct of Baldoni as ‘astroturfing’.
This essentially means that, while it appears that criticism of Lively came up from the grass, it was actually fake.
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Lively accuses Baldoni and his team of planting stories against her and manipulating social media against her.
His side, however, argue that any criticism of her is all organic and that text messages purporting to prove this campaign were taken out of context.
The two sides will face off in a high profile trial set for March of next year.
‘Lively vs Baldoni: The Hollywood Feud’ is available to stream exclusively on discovery+ from Thursday, 17 July.
Topics: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, TV and Film, Film, Celebrity
Michael Slavin