The bitter Blake Lively Vs. Justin Baldoni Battle escalated dramatically today, October 23, 2025, as Blake Lively’s legal team filed an explosive motion for sanctions in New York federal court. The motion alleges that Justin Baldoni, his production company Wayfarer Studios, and other defendants intentionally destroyed evidence of an alleged “smear campaign” by using the auto-delete feature on the encrypted messaging app Signal.
- New Legal Motion: On October 23, 2025, Lively’s attorneys filed a motion for sanctions, accusing Baldoni and his co-defendants of spoliation of evidence.
- The Allegation: The filing claims defendants used Signal’s auto-delete function to erase messages from before December 20, 2024, preventing Lively’s team from obtaining proof of a coordinated, “untraceable” retaliatory campaign.
- Core Lawsuit: Lively sued Baldoni and his company in December 2024, alleging sexual harassment on the set of their film It Ends With Us and a subsequent, illegal smear campaign as retaliation for her complaints. Baldoni vehemently denies all allegations.
- Baldoni’s Countersuit Dismissed: This new filing comes just months after Baldoni’s own legal broadside—a $400 million defamation countersuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds—was dismissed by a federal judge on June 9, 2025.
- What’s at Stake: If the judge grants the sanctions, it could result in severe penalties for Baldoni’s defense, including a potential “adverse inference” instruction to the jury, meaning they would be told to assume the deleted messages were damaging.
Lively Motion Claims “Untraceable” Campaign Was Deliberately Erased
The motion filed today by Lively’s team marks a significant escalation in the already contentious discovery phase of the lawsuit. According to the filing, the defendants failed to produce any Signal communications from before December 20, 2024—a critical period just before Lively filed her formal complaint with the California Civil Rights Department.
Lively’s motion alleges this was not an accident.
It is by now well-known that defendants texted and emailed each other about their ability to execute an ‘untraceable’ retaliatory campaign against Blake Lively that would leave no ‘fingerprints,'” the motion states, referencing previously unsealed communications.
The filing argues that while defendants maintain they only planned such a campaign, the now-missing Signal messages would prove they executed it. The motion concludes grimly that “it is clear that the messages are destroyed and cannot be replaced.”
This alleged “smear campaign” has been a central pillar of Lively’s retaliation claim. Previously released (but not auto-deleted) messages, reported by Source, detailed discussions by Baldoni’s PR team about a proposed $25,000-per-month package for “‘mostly untraceable’ services” designed to “seed content” and “push pro-Baldoni narratives” on forums like Reddit.
Baldoni’s legal team has consistently argued that these services were never fully engaged because a wave of “organic” public criticism against Lively—particularly regarding a “wear your florals” promotional comment for the domestic violence-themed film—did the work for them.
Lively’s new motion seeks to shred that defense, positing that the Signal messages would have provided the very “fingerprints” of a non-organic, manufactured campaign that the defense now claims never existed.
A War Over Wiped Messages: Both Sides Allege Deletion
Today’s motion is the latest salvo in a brutal discovery battle where both actors have accused the other of destroying evidence.
Baldoni’s Earlier Accusation Against Lively
In May 2025, it was Baldoni’s legal team, led by attorney Bryan Freedman, that levied accusations of evidence tampering. In a court filing, Freedman alleged that Lively had pressured a key third-party witness, pop superstar Taylor Swift, to “delete” personal text messages and to not cooperate with a subpoena.
Lively’s legal team fired back immediately, calling the claims “categorically false,” “baseless,” and “recklessly levelled without any supporting evidence.
Ultimately, the effort to involve Swift in the case appears to have failed. On September 13, 2025, U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman—who is overseeing the case—denied Baldoni’s request for an extension to depose Swift, effectively removing her from the legal imbroglio.
Lively’s Previous Subpoenas Quashed
Lively’s team has been aggressively pursuing Baldoni’s communications for most of 2025. In February, Judge Liman quashed a set of “overly intrusive” subpoenas from Lively’s camp that sought vast “call logs, text logs, data logs, and cell site location information” from Baldoni and his associates.
Today’s motion for sanctions represents a strategic pivot: If Lively’s lawyers cannot obtain the messages, they will now ask the court to punish the defendants for their alleged destruction. The motion claims the defense’s conduct has forced Lively’s team to file “no less than twelve discovery-related motions to date” due to the defendants “hid[ing] the ball at every turn.”
The Legal Scorecard: A Major Win for Lively
This fight over ephemeral messages is not happening in a vacuum. Baldoni’s defense enters this new phase having already sustained a massive legal blow.
On June 9, 2025, Judge Liman decisively dismissed Baldoni’s own defamation lawsuits. These included:
- A $400 million suit against Lively and Ryan Reynolds, alleging extortion and defamation.
- A $250 million suit against The New York Times for its bombshell report on Lively’s allegations.
In his dismissal, Judge Liman ruled that Baldoni, as a public figure, had failed to meet the high legal standard of proving “actual malice”—that is, that Lively or the Times made statements they knew were false or with reckless disregard for the truth.
That ruling effectively ended Baldoni’s counter-offensive and left Lively’s original lawsuit—alleging sexual harassment and retaliation—as the primary case moving forward toward a trial slated for 2026.
Official Responses and Expert View
As of press time, Baldoni’s legal team has not filed a public response to the October 23 sanctions motion.
However, their consistent position has been to portray Lively as the aggressor. In a previous statement regarding unsealed texts, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman accused Lively’s team of using “doctored and manipulated texts” and “intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative.”
While their side embraces partial truths, we embrace the full truth — and have all of the communications to back it,” Freedman stated in January 2025.
Legal experts observing the case note that a motion for sanctions based on spoliation is a “nuclear option” in civil litigation. If Lively’s team can convince Judge Liman that evidence was intentionally destroyed, the penalties could reshape the entire trial.
An “adverse inference” instruction is the most likely and most damaging outcome. This would involve the judge formally instructing the jury that they can—and should—assume that the contents of the auto-deleted Signal messages were unfavorable to Baldoni’s defense.
The ball is now in Justin Baldoni’s court. His legal team must file a formal response to the sanctions motion, explaining why the Signal messages are missing and arguing why they should not be penalized.
Judge Liman will then rule on the motion, a decision that could be a turning point in the case. This ruling will land as both sides continue the acrimonious pre-trial discovery process, hurtling toward a high-stakes jury trial in 2026 that will pit two of Hollywood’s biggest names against each other, with reputations and millions of dollars on the line.
The Information is Collected from IMDb and Yahoo.
