Prior to a possible settlement, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s heated legal battle is anticipated to get more intense.
Gregory Doll, an attorney at Doll Amir & Eley in Los Angeles who is not a representative to either of them nor connected to the lawsuit, told People magazine, “It’s very nasty, and I think it’s going to get nastier.”
He added, “It’s going to be a very consuming, very difficult, very challenging time for the parties going ahead. I think they both got great lawyers, but they’re going to pay a lot of money and it’s going to be a lot of emotional turmoil.”
Doll pointed to the strong words exchanged between Lively’s and Baldoni’s teams, saying, “Now that they’re at this critical point in the case where they’ve laid these very detailed complaints out against each other with all these very serious allegations, I think they’re going to want to find out everything that happened that they didn’t know about.”
For unversed, the 37-year-old actress from Gossip Girl has filed a lawsuit against the 41-year-old Baldoni.
She accuses him of sexual harassment during the filming of *It Ends With Us* in 2024 and claims he initiated a public smear campaign to “destroy” her reputation after she came forward with her allegations.
The lawsuit also names Baldoni’s publicists and two of his colleagues from his production company, Wayfarer.
Baldoni sued Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and their publicist for $400 million last week.
He claimed that Lively was the one who defamed him and that she attempted to take charge of the film’s release and marketing.
Additionally, the Clouds star charged them with defamation and extortion.
Baldoni also sued The New York Times, which published Lively’s initial charges in an article on December 21, for $250 million.
Interestingly, Lewis Liman of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the judge in the Lively vs. Baldoni cases, has set a pre-trial conference for February 12.
Doll clarified the meeting by saying that the specifics would be worked out during this conference.
“They talk about what is the likely expectation for a trial date estimate? How long do we need to have discovery? How many witnesses are going to be deposed? What kind of documents are you going to be seeking from one another? When should we set a trial, and for how long should we estimate that trial will last? Is it going to be a one-week trial, a two-week trial, a four-week trial?” Doll revealed.
Notably, following the discussion, Judge Liman will provide a calendar that includes the dates for completing the discovery process and filing summary motions.
