Blake Lively\u2019s lawyer, Mike Gottlieb, has criticized Justin Baldoni\u2019s legal team for their reported plan to subpoena Lively\u2019s husband, Ryan Reynolds, and her close friend Taylor Swift in an upcoming trial set for March 9, 2026. Gottlieb questioned the relevance of involving celebrities in a case focused on serious workplace allegations, telling PEOPLE, \u201cIt\u2019s completely unclear what claims or defenses\u2026 have any relevance to at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reports from April suggested that anyone close to Lively or Baldoni, including Reynolds and Swift, might be subpoenaed during pretrial discovery. Baldoni\u2019s lawyers accuse Reynolds of mocking Baldoni through a character named Nicepool in the 2024 film Deadpool & Wolverine<\/em>, calling it a \u201cthinly veiled dig.\u201d Reynolds and Marvel have denied this. Court documents also imply that Swift and Reynolds may have influenced a rooftop scene in It Ends With Us<\/em>, based on texts with Lively.<\/p>\n Gottlieb dismissed these points, emphasizing, \u201cThis is a case about what happened to Blake Lively when she raised claims of sexual harassment on the set. It\u2019s not a case about how songs were chosen for the movie. It\u2019s not a case about fictional Marvel characters in Deadpool movies.\u201d He warned against subpoenaing people simply because they are famous, saying, \u201cThe federal courts don\u2019t tolerate that kind of behavior.\u201d He also expressed concern that calling high-profile witnesses could turn the trial into a media circus.<\/p>\n In response, Baldoni\u2019s lawyer Bryan Freedman told PEOPLE, \u201cAlthough obviously uncomfortable for the Lively parties, the truth is not a distraction\u2026 Blake was the one who brought her high-profile friends into this situation.\u201d Freedman also questioned whether Disney was complicit in Ryan Reynolds using shareholder money to pursue a personal grudge, claiming Reynolds\u2019 involvement is well documented.<\/p>\n While Lively\u2019s team wants to limit celebrity involvement, Gottlieb confirmed that Blake Lively is expected to testify and that others who witnessed incidents on set will also provide testimony.<\/p>\n The legal battle began when Lively filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Baldoni in December 2024. Baldoni then filed a $400 million defamation suit in January 2025, accusing Lively of trying to portray him as a \u201creal-life villain\u201d to distract from her endorsement deals. Lively\u2019s team said Sony later asked her to oversee the final cut of It Ends With Us<\/em>, which did well, and accused Baldoni of blaming the victim in his response, calling it a desperate and doomed strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blake Lively\u2019s lawyer, Mike Gottlieb, has criticized Justin Baldoni\u2019s legal team for their reported plan to subpoena Lively\u2019s husband, Ryan\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":73583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[458],"class_list":["post-73582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-news","tag-blake-lively"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}