The It Ends With Us legal saga has now grown to six lawsuits, with Justin Baldoni accusing former publicist Stephanie Jones of leaking text messages to Blake Lively’s team, which helped spark the unfolding drama.
The new suit is actually a counterclaim to a lawsuit Jones filed last December against Baldoni, his production company Wayfarer Studios, crisis manager Melissa Nathan, and publicist Jennifer Abel (who was previously Jones’ partner at her PR firm Jonesworks). Jones accused them of defamation and breach of contract, alleging they kept her in the dark about Abel and Nathan’s “scheming to ‘bury’ and ‘destroy’” Lively while protecting Baldoni with “an aggressive smear campaign.” (Baldoni, Abel, and Nathan have repeatedly denied the smear campaign claim.)
In the new counterclaim (obtained by Rolling Stone), Baldoni, Abel, and Nathan accuse Jones of breach of contract for allegedly leaking private messages, pulled from Abel’s seized phone, to Lively’s team. It appears these text messages were part of the basis for a New York Times article that blew the scandal wide open (and has also prompted Baldoni and co. to sue the paper for libel.)
Bryan Freedman, a lawyer for the Baldoni side, said in a statement, “It is undeniable that Stephanie Jones initiated this catastrophic sequence of events by violating the most basic of privacy rights, as well as any remaining trust her clients held. No stranger to stirring up crisis scenarios for departing clients, Ms. Jones maliciously turned over communications from the phone she wrongfully took from her own partner to her cohort, [Lively’s personal publicist] Leslie Sloane, immediately after Jones was terminated for cause by Wayfarer due to her own wrongful behavior” (via Variety).
Kristin Thaler, a partner at Quinn Emanuel and a representative for Jones, told Rolling Stone: “Ms. Jones’ lawsuit is based entirely on facts and concrete evidence. That suit clearly shows that Jen Abel conspired with Melissa Nathan and others to steal reams of confidential documents, clients and staff and eventually attempt to destroy the business that Ms. Jones spent decades building.”
She continued: “Abel, Nathan, Baldoni and their co-defendants attempted to achieve these outcomes through bullying distortion and outright disparagement. These facts are backed up by dozens of messages provided in the suit we filed month ago and cannot be credibly disputed. Having no facts or evidence, we see a familiar playbook — smear our client, culminating in the work of fiction masquerading as the counterclaims that were filed yesterday.”
The new counterclaim alleges that during the summer of 2024 Jones was “seemingly in the midst of a downward spiral,” not only because of the bubbling It Ends With Us imbroglio, but a growing wave of bad press and online speculation about her alleged treatment of employees and clients. (The suit claims Jonesworks was “bleeding clients and personnel” at the time.)
Around July 2024, Abel told Jones that she planned to leave and start her own firm, and Jones was allegedly worried that Abel would take Baldoni and Wayfarer with her as clients. Jones, the lawsuit says, “wanted to make sure that did not happen,” leading her to allegedly “stir up drama and undermine Abel’s authority.”
For instance, the suit claims, Jones contacted a Daily Mail reporter in August about a story regarding Baldoni and Lively, which was “in direct violation of Abel’s instruction” and a truce Baldoni and Lively’s teams had struck in the lead up to the It Ends With Us premiere. When Sony and Lively’s team learned that “someone from Baldoni’s team had been communicating negatively to media,” Wayfarer told Jones to “cease all activities” on behalf of the company and Baldoni, and let Abel, Nathan, and others handle the situation.
That same day, according to the lawsuit, “Sloane contacted Nathan, disclosing that she had seen her text messages about Lively (which could only have come from Abel’s phone) and gloating that she should expect to be sued.”
The suit goes on to allege that Jones “reached out voluntarily to Lively’s team offering what she believed to be ammunition against Wayfarer, Baldoni, Abel, and Nathan. Wielding reams of Abel’s private communications —which, with some unscrupulous massaging and creativity — could be sliced, diced, and stripped of context to support a false narrative about them.”
It adds, “In turning over these materials to Lively, Jones knew full well that the blowback would engulf not only Abel and Nathan but also current Jonesworks clients Wayfarer and Baldoni. On information and belief, that was precisely the goal.”
Along with the legal spat involving Jonesworks, the It Ends With Us legal drama primarily centers around lawsuits Baldoni and Lively have filed against each other. Lively sued Baldoni first, accusing him of sexual harassment during production, and later subjecting her to a smear campaign designed to “silence” her.
Baldoni has denied these allegations and filed his own $400 million defamation suit against Lively. Currently, the two sides are flinging a variety of discovery and dismissal motions back and forth. Lively’s suit against Baldoni is slated to head to trial first, with a start date of March 9, 2026.
From Rolling Stone US
