The Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively legal drama intensifies as a new update has tensions escalated over a request for phone records. After collaborating on It Ends with Us, the lead actors locked horns with each other, each side coming up with their own version of the story, claims, and proofs ready to go. Now, Justin Baldoni’s legal team has clapped back at Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, aka the “Lively Parties” for issuing subpoenas and misrepresenting the actual scope behind them.
In a letter written to Judge Lewis J. Liman, Justin Baldoni’s lawyer Mitchell Schuster called out the Lively Parties for allegedly lying about what their subpoenas are looking to seek. Blasting them for trying to play FBI in the whole legal drama, let’s take a look at what Mitchell Schuster has said.
Justin Baldoni’s lawyer claps back at Blake Lively’s team
Blake Lively has subpoenaed various cell carriers, namely AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon in her legal dispute with Justin Baldoni over It Ends with Us. In the letter issued to Judge Liman, Mitchell Schuster claims that the Lively Parties have “misrepresented the scope of the subpoenas.”
Meaning that while the other party claims only to seek “non-content” records (call, text, and data logs), but not the “content of the communication,” the alleged truth is different.
BREAKING || 🚨 Team BALDONI has 👏 Clapped BACK at TEAM LIVELY discovery letter to Judge Liman and called out the GASLIGHTING 👀 pic.twitter.com/gjjatl90Zy
— CitizenJournalist (@CJournalist24) February 17, 2025
Schuster writes that the said subpoenas demand,
All Documents concerning ingoing and ongoing calls or text messages related to phone number [xxx-xxxx-xxxx] belong to [each of the individual Wayfarer Parties, some o their employees, and various non-party individuals]…including but not limited to call logs, text logs, data logs, and cell site location information.
As per Baldoni’s lawyer, “all documents” basically means “documents or electronically stores information”, which, according to Federal Rule 34 (a)(1)(A) includes, “writings, drawing, graphs, charts, photographs, sound recordings, images, and other data or data compilations.”
The letter continues to state that had the Lively Parties asked for only the call, text, and data logs, they would have mentioned, “all call, text, and data logs for phone number [xxx-xxxx-xxxx]” and not “all documents” as they did.
Mitchell Schuster calls the demands “broad” and “invasive”
In his letters, as per US Weekly, Schuster called out the Lively Parties for issuing subpoenas that were invasive, atypical, and broad, stating that they were not the FBI, at the end of the day.
He added that the subpoenas not only seek the call and text history of Baldoni and the others but also details on their location and web browsing history.
Schuster wrote,
It is hard to overstate how broad, invasive, and atypical these Subpoenas truly are. This is civil litigation, not a criminal prosecution, and the Lively Parties are not the FBI. Yet the Subpoenas seek not only the complete call and text history of each of the targets over a period of several years (no matter the sender, recipient or subject matter) but also, over the same period, real-time location information and data logs reflecting, among other things, web browsing history.
The letter also brings forth the fact that these subpoenas “unnecessarily invade the privacy of untold numbers of third parties, including family, friends, business partners, and quite literally” anyone else they have communicated with over the last few years (via Variety).
Schuster also added that the demand “grossly” goes beyond “the scope of permissible discovery” and while Baldoni and the team do not object to the use of third-party discovery by both sides, they just want it all to be done in a “legally permissible fashion.” Time will tell where the case is headed next.
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