Justin Baldoni's It Ends With Us Lawyer Actually Sued Justin 4 Years Ago
What is going on!?
Justin Baldoni picked a familiar face when he filed his defamation lawsuit against Blake Lively. Although, strangely, his lawyer was actually opposing Baldoni in their first legal skirmish. Turns out, four years before attorney Bryan Freedman was representing Baldoni, he was suing him.
Back in 2021, Freedman represented a man named Travis Flores, who sued Baldoni over similarities between his film Five Feet Apart and Flores’ own script that centered on a romance between two cystic fibrosis patients. Us Weekly shared details from the filing:
“Flores kept his screenplay from Baldoni both because Flores had a policy of keeping his work confidential and because Baldoni was working on the feature film project that Flores viewed as competitive,” the court documents said. “Unbeknownst to Flores, however, Baldoni already had a different source to provide him with information about Three Feet Distance. As it turned out, Baldoni’s film — which became titled Five Feet Apart — would copy numerous elements of Three Feet Distance.”
The copyright infringement case wound up getting thrown out in 2022.
Now, Freedman is putting his full weight behind Baldoni, emerging as a key player in the ever-evolving dispute between Baldoni and his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively. Not only did Freedman leak footage from filming in an attempt to help Baldoni’s case, he’s also been very vocal to media outlets about Baldoni’s claims, including lending credence to allegations Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds slipped jokes about Baldoni into his movie Deadpool & Wolverine.
On Jan. 22, Lively and Reynolds’ attorneys filed a motion to put a gag order on Freedman, accusing him of continuing an alleged smear campaign against Lively with his public statements and actions.
All of this comes one month after Lively filed a legal complaint alleging Baldoni of sexual harassment on the It Ends With Us set, as well as himself and a hired PR team allegedly orchestrating to ruin her reputation via social media conspiracies. Baldoni responded with a massive lawsuit for $400 million.
