Justin Baldoni’s lawyer’s bid to depose Taylor Swift in the ongoing lawsuit with his It Ends With Us co-star, Blake Lively, has been rejected by a judge.
Judge Lewis Liman ruled on Friday that Baldoni’s lawyers waited too long to schedule Swift’s deposition and won’t be extending the deadline beyond 30 September.
“Having failed to demonstrate appropriate diligence, the requested extension is denied,” said Liman.
In December 2024, Lively filed a lawsuit claiming Baldoni sexually harassed her on the set of the Coleen Hoover adaptation, in which Baldoni played her character’s abusive partner. In a defamation lawsuit, which has since been rejected, Baldoni alleged that Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, tried to destroy his career using false allegations of sexual harassment.
On Friday, Swift’s lawyer rejected claims that she has agreed to hand over evidence as part of the legal dispute.
“As counsel for the parties know, since the inception of this matter, we have consistently maintained that my client has no material role in this action,” read a letter submitted Friday by Swift’s legal team and obtained by US Weekly.
“Further, my client did not agree to a deposition, but if she is forced into a deposition, we advised (after first hearing about the deposition just three days ago) that her schedule would accommodate the time required during the week of October 20 if the parties were able to work out their disputes,” the filing added. “We take no role in those disputes.”
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The denial comes in direct response to court documents filed by Baldoni’s legal team on Thursday, asking for an extension on the discovery period to accommodate Swift’s deposition the week of 20 October “due to Ms. Swift’s pre-existing professional obligations.”
Swift, whose new album The Life of a Showgirl will be released on 3 October, has “agreed to appear for deposition but is unable to do so before October 20, 2025,” they claimed.
The Gossip Girl star’s lawyer also disputed Baldoni’s team’s assertions that Swift has “agreed” to sit for a deposition, saying they are “without evidence”.
“Even if one were to take the Wayfarer Defendants’ representation at face value, they have not come close to establishing good cause for their requested relief,” they said in documents filed Friday.
Baldoni’s team was said to be interested in text messages that Lively may have exchanged with Swift about the working conditions on the set of It Ends With Us.
As part of the discovery process, Baldoni’s legal team had subpoenaed Swift for her communications with Lively.
That subpoena was dropped in May, after Swift’s representative hit back by saying it had been “designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.” In addition, Lively’s team were unsuccessful in their attempts to exclude Swift from the case entirely.
Swift was dragged into the legal battle early on, when Baldoni claimed he was invited to Lively’s house in 2023 to discuss script changes, where both Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, and Swift were present to serve as her “dragons.”
They denied that Swift had any involvement in the movie’s production, telling The Independent that her only connection to the project was her song “My Tears Ricochet”, which was used in the soundtrack.
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film,” the spokesperson said. “She did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history.”
