Blake Lively has secured a significant procedural victory in her sexual harassment action against Justin Baldoni.
According to legal materials obtained by the Daily Mail, a federal judge has directed Jamey Heath, a producer of It Ends With Us, to produce all recordings of his wife Natasha’s home birth. Ms. Lively, age 38, alleges that Mr. Heath previously displayed this material to her on set without prior warning. In a six-page memorandum and order issued on Monday by Judge Lewis J. Liman of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the court required Mr. Heath to turn over the footage within three days.
The order follows Ms. Lively’s motion for sanctions based on Mr. Heath’s alleged failure to produce the footage, which she contends is central to her claims. Ms. Lively alleges that Mr. Heath approached her and her assistant on set and played a video depicting “a fully nude woman with her legs spread apart,” which she initially believed to be pornographic material. According to her complaint, Mr. Heath subsequently stated that the video depicted his wife giving birth. Mr. Heath denies having displayed any such footage and maintains that he showed only a post-birth clip featuring himself, his wife, and their newborn child.
Judge Liman noted that because Ms. Lively alleges she was shown birth imagery and Mr. Heath denies doing so, the complete set of recordings may constitute probative evidence relevant to the dispute. The judge therefore ruled that all versions of the birth footage, including any segments depicting delivery, must be produced. The court further held that Ms. Lively’s discovery requests extend to all materials “relating to, referring to, describing, evidencing, or constituting” the birth footage.
The court acknowledged the highly sensitive and personal nature of the videos and reaffirmed that they are protected by the operative confidentiality order. However, the court held that sensitivity alone does not exempt the materials from discovery obligations.
The ruling concludes by directing Mr. Heath to produce the footage within three days of the order’s issuance, granting Ms. Lively’s motion in part and denying it in part, but ruling in her favor on the key issue of access to the full recordings. The Clerk of Court was instructed to close the motion.
Ms. Lively originally raised the allegations in early filings concerning her claim that certain materials used in connection with the film It Ends With Us were employed without her consent. The dispute regarding the birth video has since become one of the most unusual and contentious aspects of the litigation.
Mr. Heath was deposed earlier this year and reportedly acknowledged the existence of multiple videos related to his wife’s childbirth, prompting Ms. Lively to seek court intervention to ensure full disclosure. With the judge’s order now in place, her counsel intends to review the footage to determine whether it corroborates Ms. Lively’s allegation that she was shown graphic birth material rather than the limited post-birth clip Mr. Heath contends he displayed.
Ms. Lively initiated her lawsuit in December, asserting claims of sexual harassment, retaliation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and others involved in the film’s production. Mr. Heath, as Wayfarer’s chief executive, was also named as a defendant. All defendants deny the allegations.
In a now-dismissed complaint filed by Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath alleged that Ms. Lively made an “outrageous and knowingly false suggestion” that she had been shown pornography or nude images of Mr. Heath’s wife. They asserted that the video—described as a depiction of a post-birth family moment and shared with Ms. Heath’s consent—was intended to illustrate the director’s vision for a birthing scene in the film. They denied showing Ms. Lively the full video and took issue with her characterization of the material.
Ms. Lively’s complaint, however, states that Mr. Heath played a video depicting a fully nude woman in the midst of childbirth, that she perceived it as pornographic, and that she objected immediately. She alleges she inquired whether Mr. Heath had his wife’s consent to share such intimate footage and that he responded dismissively.
Ms. Lively’s counsel has further noted that in Wayfarer’s now-dismissed counterclaim, the defendants stated that Mr. Heath showed Ms. Lively birth-related footage at Mr. Baldoni’s direction to illustrate the planned birthing scene of Ms. Lively’s character, Lily Bloom.
Mr. Baldoni subsequently filed a defamation action against Ms. Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, her publicist Leslie Sloane, and The New York Times, seeking $400 million in damages based on the newspaper’s reporting of Ms. Lively’s sexual harassment allegations. That counteraction was dismissed in June, leaving Ms. Lively’s sexual harassment suit as the sole remaining case.
Recent court filings reported by the Daily Mail indicate that the judge has declined to advance Mr. Baldoni’s claims against Ms. Lively, Mr. Reynolds, and The New York Times.#newsafro_
