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Justin Baldoni filed a lawsuit against his former publicist Stephanie Jones in the wake of the legal drama between himself and Blake Lively, his lawyer Bryan Freedman claiming she “maliciously” leaked texts.
Now, Jones has fired back, filing her own defamation lawsuit against Justin and his company, Wayfarer Studios. Jones alleges she was legally obligated to turn the evidence over after being served with a civil subpoena by Blake’s legal team.
“Extra’s” Billy Bush sat down with Jones’ attorneys Maaren Shah and Kristin Tahler, who have also filed suits against two of Jones’ former colleagues, claiming they colluded and schemed in texts to steal clients from her public relations company Jonesworks.
Shah explained, “They said they want to take her clients, they said there is a kill story about Steph that was in Business Insider that we believe they conspired to put out there. They said they were going to be rich and happy and make lots of money together.”
Billy asked, “The issue, I guess the biggest one for me, is the text messages that appeared in The New York Times on December 22. Baldoni and his team cried collusion. You guys say those texts were not leaked, they were subpoenaed by Blake, yes?”
Shah confirmed, “That’s right, Billy. Our client Stephanie Jones has found herself in the middle of a lot of speculation recently.”
She continued, “Stephanie has been in the industry for a long time… She had to file the lawsuit that we are here to talk about to protect that business, to protect her clients, to protect the reputation she spent years building.”
Billy also asked about Jones’ former employee Jennifer Abel, who left and became a member of Baldoni’s crisis PR team.
Tahler said of Jones, “She’s here because there were real contractual breaches. There was a contractual breach by her former employee Jennifer Abel. But there are also contractual breaches by Wayfarer and by Justin Baldoni. They had a contract with Jonesworks. They breached that contract.”
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Billy asked, “Does Wayfarer owe money to Jonesworks?”
Tahler confirmed, “Absolutely,” saying it is a at least a couple hundred thousand dollars.
Shah differentiated this legal case from the one between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively. “She has an entirely separate legal case that she brought against Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer, [publicist] Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel for contract breaches, for smearing her in the press, for stealing her documents and clients,” Shah said. “The defendants in our case… have not tried to dismiss Steph’s claims against them… We are moving forward to trial.”
Talking about an explosive new twist in the case, Billy said, “This is where it gets interesting. Stephanie Jones maintains she didn’t leak any texts to The New York Times — they were subpoenaed. Then, recently, we find out they were subpoenaed by a company called Vanzan Incorporated, owned by Blake Lively. And it’s Vanzan versus 10 Jane Does in a very obscure lawsuit that no one knows who it’s about, what it’s about… But it does require that all these phones and proprietary property are subpoenaed and brought in, to which Team Baldoni will say that was to glean all of these texts and be able to use them. And they end up in Blake Lively’s hands, which ends up in The New York Times’ hands — that’s a little bit of a sticky area, because Stephanie’s just responding to a subpoena. The question is: did she know the subpoena was coming from Blake Lively’s shell company?”
Tahler replied, “Let me just say the process that was used was fully appropriate to use… The Doe lawsuit is a common lawsuit.”
Billy went on, “Is it an end-around, while it’s legal?”
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Tahler explained, “It is absolutely not an end-around. It’s a common practice that if somebody is defamed, if somebody is smeared, if something happens and they don’t know who did it, they can file a lawsuit.”
Citing an example of a defaming website, Tahler said, “You want to find the person who has that website out there. You can file a Doe lawsuit where there is a plaintiff against Does to find that out.”
Bush wondered, “What do you expect to happen here?”
Shah said, “As I said, we’re moving forward with our legal claims. Those are very strong very well-founded. And we’re going to move with them to trial.”
Billy asked, “Would you settle if Bryan Freedman and Justin Baldoni wanted to settle with you?”
Shah insisted, “Never say never, but that’s a question as we move forward [that] we’re all going to have to grapple with.”
