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Justin Baldoni’s legal battle with Blake Lively has taken a bizarre new twist, with lawyers launching 14 new claims against his embattled former publicist, Stephanie Jones, on Thursday.
Baldoni’s, 41, movie company, Wayfarer, and his publicist for the film It Ends With Us, Jennifer Abel, both filed new claims including a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, breach of contract, defamation, and fraud against Jones.
They accused Jones of snooping on Abel’s private messages all the way until January this year, and plotting a ‘flagrant abuse of process’ with Lively, 37, to generate a subpoena from a ‘sham lawsuit’ to cover up Jones allegedly leaking messages to Lively.
Abel’s new filing also accused Jones of making ‘bizarre’ claims about Abel to her staff based on supposed information from ‘psychic readings.’
‘In one instance, Jones announced to Abel’s subordinates that she had learned through psychic readings that Abel was an alcoholic and a gambling addict.’
Abel added that the claim had ‘no basis in reality’, and instead ‘raised alarm about whether Jones was in the midst of a mental breakdown.’
Justin Baldoni’s, 41, legal battle with Blake Lively, 37, has taken a bizarre new twist, with lawyers launching 14 new claims against his embattled former publicist Stephanie Jones
Abel’s court document said: ‘Although Jones had always been volatile, she now appeared to be actively unraveling.’
‘On a different occasion, Jones announced, again per her psychic, that Abel would soon be pregnant with twins, humiliating and infuriating Abel, who—Jones knew—had struggled with fertility issues,’ the filing said.
Jones’ lawyers shot back, calling the new claims ‘just distraction and noise’ and ‘a few debunked conspiracy theories’, in a scathing statement to DailyMail.com.
The two bombshell documents filed in New York federal court totaled a combined 125 pages.
The filings were made in Jones’ lawsuit against Abel.
After Lively and Baldoni’s legal battle exploded into the courts in December, Jones sued her former staffer Abel in January claiming that Abel plotted behind her back to steal Baldoni as a client, and falsely pinned an alleged smear campaign against Lively on Jones.
Trial-watchers were expecting a run-of-the mill filing this evening: a boilerplate denial of Jones’ claims.
But instead, Baldoni and Abel’s lawyer Bryan Freedman went on the offensive.
Abel’s filing accused Jones of stealing her personal data from her Jonesworks PR firm company phone when she announced she was quitting in July 2024.
Baldoni’s movie company Wayfarer and his publicist for the film It Ends With Us, Jennifer Abel, both filed new claims including a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, breach of contract, defamation, and fraud against Jones (pictured)
Abel’s new filing accuses Jones of ‘bizarre’ claims to staff, based on ‘psychic readings,’ including false accusations about Abel (pictured) being ‘an alcoholic and a gambling addict’, which Abel says caused alarm about Jones being ‘in the midst of a mental breakdown’
They accused Jones of snooping on Abel’s private messages all the way until January this year, and plotting a ‘flagrant abuse of process’ with Lively to generate a subpoena from a ‘sham lawsuit’ to cover up Jones allegedly leaking messages to Lively
She claimed Jones had illicit access to all her personal texts through her iCloud account – until as recently as January this year.
Abel claimed the alleged snooping amounted to a ‘violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act’, ‘violations of Stored Communications Act’ and ‘violations of the Federal Wiretap Act’.
The claws were out in the filing, with Abel giving a damning description of Jones’ workplace.
She claimed morale at Jonesworks was ‘Abysmal’, that it ‘had a toxic workplace culture’, and staff ‘constantly gossiped and complained’.
Abel even claimed Jones would ‘regularly turn on deafening music so that she could berate her employees free from scrutiny.’
She quoted an unnamed former employee allegedly saying ‘I don’t think there was one day in the office that someone wasn’t crying.’
Abel claimed that when she left and Jones seized her company phone, the PR boss ‘had been sharing her private text messages with the entire office, mocking and disparaging her.’
The filing even claimed Jones ‘retained access to Abel’s iCloud for multiple months thereafter, monitoring and intercepting her private communications in real-time […] not only with her clients, fiancé, doctors, parents, and friends but also with the undersigned counsel.’
In their filings, both Abel and Wayfarer cited another twist in the case that was revealed by DailyMail.com last week.
Jones’ lawyers shot back, calling the new claims ‘just distraction and noise’ and ‘a few debunked conspiracy theories’, in a scathing statement to DailyMail.com
After Lively and Baldoni’s legal battle exploded into the courts in December, Jones sued her former staffer Abel in January claiming that Abel plotted behind her back to steal Baldoni as a client, and falsely pinned an alleged smear campaign against Lively on Jones
And now Baldoni and Abel’s lawyer Bryan Freedman (pictured) went on the offensive. Abel’s filing accused Jones of stealing her personal data from her Jonesworks PR firm company phone when she announced she was quitting in July 2024
DailyMail.com uncovered how Lively used her little-known company Vanzan Inc. to quietly file a mysterious lawsuit against unnamed defendants in September last year, months before her public legal battle with Baldoni began.
She then used the lawsuit to secretly issue a subpoena to Jones for embarrassing texts between Baldoni, Abel and his crisis PR Melissa Nathan, without alerting any of them.
The texts, allegedly showing a smear campaign plot against Lively, were used in her bombshell California legal complaint in December that kicked off the public legal war between the two Hollywood stars, and were shared with the New York Times in an explosive article the next day.
In their legal filing on Thursday night, Abel and Wayfarer slammed the tactic as a ‘sham lawsuit’ and ‘nothing more than a transparent ploy to obtain subpoena power.’
Abel called it a ‘flagrant abuse of process’.
‘Since there were no identifiable parties and no party had been served, the subpoenas were issued without notice, depriving Abel of any knowledge of the subpoena, much less the opportunity to object,’ her filing said.
She accused Jones of having already leaked texts with Lively’s team – and using the secret Vanzan lawsuit to create ‘a veneer of legitimacy’ and ‘plausible deniability’.
‘As a result of Jones’ malicious scheme, Abel’s life has been turned upside down,’ her filing said.
‘In an unimaginable invasion of Abel’s privacy and dignity, Jones and the Lively Parties now possess the full contents of Abel’s iCloud and email accounts, including her photos, text messages, and emails. Abel lives in fear of what is to come, given the vast troves of personal data in the possession of these hostile actors.’
Wayfarer’s filing accused Jones of a ‘breach of contract’ for giving up the messages, claiming it violated the ‘confidentiality provision’ by ‘voluntarily and maliciously disclosing Confidential Information’.
As well as two counts of ‘Breach of contract’, they accused Jones of ‘breach of implied covenant’ and defamation.
Jones’ lawyers hit back with statements to DailyMail.com slamming the new claims as a distraction from what they say was a straightforward breach of contract by Abel.
Jones’ attorney Kristin Tahler accused Freedman of ‘reversing course, dropping previously touted claims, presenting zero new evidence’.
Tahler was referring to Abel’s previous stance that she had suffered ‘false imprisonment’, trapped at the Jonesworks office and intimidated into signing documents and giving up her company phone – a claim that did not appear in the new filings on Thursday.
‘This case will be decided on the mountain of evidence that demonstrates Wayfarer Studios and Ms. Abel deliberately breached their contracts with Jonesworks, which the defendants have conspicuously failed to rebut,’ fellow attorney Maaren Shah added.
‘The defendants’ weak attempt to assemble their own case against Ms. Jones amounts to nothing more than a few debunked conspiracy theories and media gimmicks that have no basis in fact or evidence.’
