Taylor Swift's team has tried to put some light in between her and the Justin Baldoni film It Ends With Us, even as her friend Blake Lively is suing Baldoni, who co-starred in the movie with Lively that he directed, for sexual harassment. Now, a judge has ruled that Lively must turn over any pertinent texts between her and Swift to Baldoni's legal team, noting that their request to see those texts is "reasonably tailored to discover information that would prove or disprove Lively's harassment and retaliation claims," reports Entertainment Weekly.
That's because, per a Wednesday ruling by US District Judge Lewis J. Liman, "Lively herself has identified Swift as someone likely to have knowledge about complaints or discussions regarding the working environment on the set" of the film. Although Liman heard the argument of Lively's lawyers that Baldoni was looking for the Swift texts "to prop up a public relations narrative outside of court," he didn't deny the Baldoni team's request. Swift did have a song featured in Baldoni's film, "My Tears Ricochet," but she was said to otherwise have been uninvolved in the movie's production.
In a statement, a Lively rep says that "Baldoni's desire to drag Taylor Swift into this has been constant dating back to August" of last year, and that "we will continue to call out Baldoni's relentless efforts to exploit Ms. Swift's popularity, which from day one has been nothing more than a distraction from the serious sexual harassment and retaliation accusations" he and his Wayfarer Studios are facing. Swift, who NBC News notes is the godmother to one of Lively's four children with actor Ryan Reynolds, had been subpoenaed in the case earlier this year as a witness, but that subpoena was later pulled back, with Lively's lawyers calling it an "unwarranted fishing expedition," per Variety. A trial for Lively's complaint is set to kick off in March. (More Blake Lively stories.)
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