A Texas disaster communications specialist has sued Blake Lively for defamation after the actor pulled him into her authorized combat with co-star and director Justin Baldoni over their movie, “It Ends With Us.”
Jed Wallace and his firm, Street Relations, filed the $7 million lawsuit in federal court docket in Texas on Tuesday. It says he had nothing to do with any marketing campaign to hurt Lively’s popularity as she alleged in a court docket submitting.
Wallace is just not among the many defendants in Lively’s federal lawsuit in opposition to Baldoni, his manufacturing firm and publicists, through which she alleges sexual and different harassment throughout the manufacturing and a marketing campaign to smear her after it. The disaster specialist is called within the court docket papers and the New York Times story revealed on the day the sequence of authorized battles started in December when Lively filed a grievance.
Lively’s attorneys stated in an announcement that Wallace’s lawsuit “is not just a publicity stunt.”
“It is transparent retaliation in response to allegations contained within a sexual harassment and retaliation complaint that Ms. Lively filed with the California Civil Rights Department,” the assertion stated. “While this lawsuit will be dismissed, we are pleased that Mr. Wallace has finally emerged from the shadows, and that he too will be held accountable in federal court.”
In a submitting final week in Hays County, Texas, that seeks a deposition from Wallace, Lively alleges he was utilized by publicists working with Baldoni to weaponize “a digital army around the country, including in New York and Los Angeles, to create, seed, manipulate, and advance disparaging content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums.”
Wallace’s lawsuit says neither he nor his firm “had something to do with the alleged sexual harassment, retaliation, failure to research or aiding and abetting the alleged harassment or alleged retaliation.”
It says the actor’s Texas submitting “conceded that Lively has no details supporting the allegations she made in opposition to Wallace and Street,” which is why she now seeks to research the extent of his conduct.
After Lively sued Baldoni, he filed his personal federal lawsuit in opposition to her and her husband, “Deadpool” star Ryan Reynolds, accusing them of defamation and extortion and looking for at the least $400 million in damages.
Baldoni had already sued The New York Times for libel, and his former publicist filed a lawsuit taking Lively’s facet.
“It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel that begins as a romance however takes a darkish flip into home violence, was launched in August, exceeding field workplace expectations with a home whole of almost $150 million. The success was adopted by close to fixed turmoil over its manufacturing and promotion.
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