Blake Lively's It Ends With Us lawsuit against Justin Baldoni gets March 2026 trial date

A New York judge set a March 2026 trial date on Monday and moved an initial conference from mid-February to next week as the public feud between Blake Lively and her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni continued to grow and accelerate. The lawyers said Baldoni’s attorney was trying to wreck Lively’s career and turn potential New York jurors against her by creating a website to release selected documents and communications between Lively and Baldoni. The lawyers said attorney Bryan Freedman, representing Baldoni, was “engaging in this extrajudicial campaign to influence these proceedings and the public perception of legal filings to this Court, and there already is a serious risk that his misconduct is tainting the jury pool.” They added: “The endless stream of defamatory and extrajudicial media statements must end.” Freedman said in a statement in response to Monday's assertions that the “irony is not lost on anyone that Ms. Lively is so petrified of the truth that she has moved to gag it.” “We will always respect the court; however, we will never be bullied by those suggesting we cannot defend our clients with pure, unedited facts,” the lawyer said. “All we want is for people to see the actual text messages that directly contradict her allegations, video footage that clearly shows there was no sexual harassment and all the other powerful evidence that directly contradicts any false allegations.” In a letter to the judge on Thursday, Baldoni's attorney, Kevin Fritz, accused Lively of a publicity campaign that left Baldoni and other defendants the “objects of public scorn and contempt.” He said the actions had damaged those she sued so that they were “exiled from polite society and suffered damages totalling hundreds of millions of dollars due to Ms Lively’s scorched-earth media campaign.” In the separate filing in Hays County, Texas, a precursor to another potential lawsuit, Lively asks for an order for a deposition from Jed Wallace, a crisis management specialist she alleges was behind much of the social media manipulation surrounding the film that turned public sentiment against her through posts on Reddit and TikTok.