Judge threatens to move Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively lawsuit forward if lawyers can't stop public comments
Judge threatens to move Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively lawsuit forward if lawyers can't stop public comments
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Actors’ lawyers faced off for the first time in a Monday court hearing. A New York judge has threatened to move up Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s March 2026 trial date if their lawyers continue their war of words in the press. On Monday (February 3), Lively’s attorney, Michael Gottlieb, and Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, faced off in court for the first official hearing. Both Lively, 37, and Baldoni, 41, were absent from the nearly two-hour pretrial meeting. However, that didn’t keep their legal representatives from accusing one another of verbally attacking each other’s clients in the media.
He additionally accused Freedman of making “inflammatory extrajudicial comments” about Lively’s “character and motives” in TV interviews. Freedman hit back, claiming that Gottlieb was trying to impose a “gag order” so that he would no longer be able to talk to the press. "My client is devastated financially and emotionally,” Freedman claimed. Judge Liman proceeded to step in, saying that both sides have “given the public plenty to feast upon.”.
He added that if the case continued to be "litigated in the press," he would have no choice but to move up the trial date to prevent a jury from becoming prejudiced against one side. Gottlieb took issue with the website, questioning Freedman about who created and funded it. He also promised that they, too, would be filing an amended complaint that would add further allegations. The judge told both parties that due to the “significant number of high-profile individuals” in the case and the “nature of the allegations,” they would need to agree to a protective order.
