After Justin Baldoni’s attorney said that Taylor Swift would sit for a deposition in the simmering legal battle between him and his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively, the pop star has fired back.
Swift’s lawyer asserted on Friday that she has “no material role” in the case and did not agree to be deposed, contradicting what Baldoni’s team claimed.
Baldoni’s attorney said on Thursday that she requested an agreement to take Swift’s deposition in late October due to the singer’s “preexisting professional obligations”.
Lively’s attorney wants the judge to deny the deadline extension and accused Baldoni of seeking to bring Swift into litigation “to generate a media spectacle in this matter”.
The singer would only provide a deposition in the case if Baldoni’s legal team can convince US District Judge Lewis Liman to extend a deadline for her to provide testimony.
It’s the latest twist in the high-profile legal saga between Lively and Baldoni.
Duelling lawsuits between the It Ends With Us stars have raged in New York federal court following the awkward promotional campaign for their 2024 film that Baldoni also produced and directed.
Lively sued Baldoni and his studio in New York court last year alleging she was sexually harassed on set and that he led a campaign to “destroy” her reputation.
Baldoni counter-sued the Gossip Girl star, but his defamation lawsuit was dismissed in June.
In legal documents obtained by the BBC’s US media partner CBS, the Jane the Virgin actor’s attorney on Thursday accused Lively of misleadingly implying that Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios requested “a blanket thirty-day extension of the discovery cut-off date”.
“In fact, Wayfarer Parties requested an agreement solely to take the deposition of Taylor Swift during the week of October 20-25 due to Ms. Swift’s preexisting professional obligations,” his attorney Ellyn S. Garofalo said.
Garofalo asked the court to modify its scheduling order “for the sole purpose of accommodating third-party witness Taylor Swift”, whom she says agreed to appear for a deposition but would not be able to do so before 20 October.
Swift is due to release her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on 3 October, announcing the drop last month on her fiancé Travis Kelce’s podcast.
In response, Lively’s attorney Michael J Gottlieb on Friday sent a letter to Judge Liman asking the judge to deny Baldoni and his co-defendants’ request for a deadline extension.
Gottlieb said Baldoni’s team “repeatedly sought to bring Ms Swift into this litigation to fuel their relentless media strategy”.
“In this latest effort, the Wayfarer Defendants assert—though, notably, without evidence—that Ms Swift has supposedly ‘agreed’ to sit for a deposition sometime between October 20-25 (some three weeks after the close of fact discovery in this matter),” Gottlieb wrote.
Gottlieb added Baldoni’s team has “not come close to establishing good cause” for their requested extension.
He said Baldoni’s team did not contact Swift’s lawyer with details about the deposition until earlier this week and accused the defendants of an “astounding” lack of diligence, as well as disrespect to Swift’s privacy and schedule.
In a separate filing on Friday, Swift’s lawyer J Douglas Baldridge wrote to the judge saying “since the inception of this matter we have consistently maintained that my client has no material role in this action”.
He added that Swift did not agree to a desposition but would comply “if she is forced into a deposition”. He noted that they first heard about the depositioon three days prior and that she would comply “if she is forced into a deposition” by the court.
However, he reasserted that she can only be deposed during the week of 20 October because that is the only time her schedule can accommodate the time required.
In May, Baldoni’s lawyers tried to obtain messages between Lively and the singer directly from Swift by sending subpoenas to the Grammy Award winner and her legal team.
But the subpoenas were dropped after Swift’s legal team objected that they amounted to an “unwarranted fishing expedition”.
Lively’s team applied to prevent Baldoni obtaining the messages, arguing they were irrelevant.
In June, the judge ruled that messages between Lively and Swift can be handed over to Mr Baldoni, saying that communications between the friends about the environment on the It Ends With Us film set are relevant to the case.