Blake Lively’s Gag Order Explained by Celebrity Lawyer

[Source: Popcorned Planet]

Celebrity lawyer and legal analyst Christopher C. Melcher, who is ranked as a best family law attorney in California, explains Blake Lively‘s gag order and the California right to sue letter.

Andy Signore: Blake Lively is now asking the courts to silence Justin Baldoni’s lawyer. I guess she can’t handle all this video evidence. We have celebrity lawyer and legal analyst Christopher C. Melcher here to break down on what’s allowed. Welcome to Popcorned Planet. I am Andy Signore back with Christopher Melcher. So good to see you, sir. How are you doing?

Christopher Melcher : Oh, great. Great to be here first time on the show in 2025. So I miss everyone and I’m really happy to be back here on the channel.

Andy Signore : And I’m glad I heard you’re safe from the fires. I’m sending so much love to everybody out there who’s been facing the horrors of those fires out in California. My heart goes out to everybody, but I hear California is coming together, which is great. I just wish these three people could all unite and stop fighting because it seems like the entire world is getting fed up with this entire case, but more and more people are seemingly coming to Justin’s side. I know you haven’t been following this as closely, but I wanted to bring you into this because the latest just came in guys.

Blake & Ryan’s Gag Order

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are now demanding that Justin’s lawyer shut up as TMZ is reporting. They’re out there now trying to get a gag order. Let me get this comment in here. They filed a letter today in court. They asked the court to issue a protective order to stop Baldoni’s lawyers led by Bryan Freedman from engaging in improper conduct, including going on an alleged harassing and retaliatory media campaign against Blake and Ryan.

They say he is violating court rules that stop a lawyer from making statements to the press that are irrelevant to a case and might prejudice the jury. Blake and Ryan specifically mentioned the release of this unedited footage that we’ve reported on which Blake’s team claims corroborates to the letter which she described. We’re not seeing that Chris, but that’s what now she’s claiming.

What’s frustrating to me, and I know you aren’t as up to date, what’s frustrating to me is Blake started all this by leaking Justin’s text messages with his PR team, which we’re still trying to figure out how she actually got them. Did they actually legally get them the proper way, but basically stole all his text messages, very private exchanges, and then she cropped and took out a context and put them all in this narrative for the New York Times to post that we’re learning- it wasn’t fully honest.

So I just find this massively hypocritical that she then put this out there and now Justin’s trying to defend himself in every step of the way he’s trying to defend himself, legally. They’re trying to call him an abuser and this is just a tactic out of the playbook and it’s mind-boggling. I guess I want to start by asking you legally, is Justin allowed to respond and release these texts and videos to defend himself now that Blake, the New York Times, and so many others have sort of written him off and canceled him?

Christopher Melcher : Well, absolutely, and that’s the point I wanted to comment on was that legal argument that they’re making, that this is somehow improper to go and defend themselves in the media.

Trial Publicity in CA Rule 3.6

And so there is a rule of professional conduct in California. If you ever want to look at it, it’s rule 3.6, about trial publicity and it’s saying that lawyers have a responsibility not to publicize facts in the case or allegations really in the case that might prejudice a jury. So we’re not supposed to try our case in the press, we’re supposed to try it in the courtroom, but we all know that’s not the way it works.

A lot of these cases settle and they never go to a jury. And also a lot of these lawsuits that we’re seeing, I mean you name it, any of these lawsuits, they look like a press release. They look like a book actually, and that’s legally not required.

Notice Pleading in State Courts

In federal court and a lot of state courts we have notice pleading, which just means I am suing you for whatever employment, discrimination, here’s the relationship that we had and I was subjective to this abuse and I want damages. That’s all you really need to allege. It’s the ultimate facts that you have to state.

Blake’s Press Release Disguised as a Lawsuit

There’s no reason to attach text messages, demand letters, any of this stuff, but that’s what her complaint looks like. It’s like 50 pages of, let me show you every text message that I want to show you or portions of them. And then at the very bottom, get to why I’m suing. So she started it with basically a press release that was disguised or dressed up as a lawsuit.

Andy Signore: As a complaint. It was even a complaint first. She was doing a bunch of sneaky ways to get it out there in the press and protect herself too.

CA Right to Sue Letter

Christopher Melcher: Well, that’s right. So, in California, before you can sue for an employment violation, you have to get permission from the state or federal government. It’s called a right to sue letter because the state has an interest in making sure that employment practices are done correctly and there’s no discrimination. So, you have to petition them to say, “Hey, are you guys going to take the lawsuit on?” Many times the state or feds will say no, and they issue a right to sue letter and then now you can file your private action.

So, she’s using that process, but then basically leaking all of that to then hide behind this litigation privilege that we have because it says if you’re engaged in making claims in court or petitioning here for these right to sue letters, that you can’t be sued for defamation for statements that you reasonably make in contemplation of litigation or during litigation. So she’s playing that game and then when he comes back defensively saying all of a sudden it’s wrong and that just can’t be true.

Andy Signore: She started by saying, yeah, his response, the first one was, “Well, they’re just attacking me more.” This is not a he said, she said is the kind of language that she’s putting out there. This is not a feud from creative differences, but it is because the text messages she’s posting are her sort of perspective… The other thing that Justin proved, I know you haven’t followed as closely, is they literally were moving texts in between texts and emojis to sort of make it sound worse. So she was not only releasing these text messages, they were picking and choosing how they were placed in her PR lawsuit and then sort of claiming, well, when Justin fought back, he’s an abuser. This is ridiculous. He’s attacking me more. I mean, that’s ridiculous, right?

Pre-Trial Publicity Rules

Christopher Melcher: Well, that’s right. So, in that rule of professional conduct, because this is what I think they’re going under. There’s an exception in the rule itself that says that if the other side has engaged in pre-trial publicity, you, if you’re the defendant here, have the right, and the defendant‘s counsel has the right to come back and say, “Hey, I’m going to set the record straight. Of course we have that right.”

And for her to claim that it’s okay for her to do this, but it’s wrong for him to respond to it really, really shows she’s not fighting fair, she’s not being reasonable, she’s being inconsistent. She’s trying to keep the truth from coming out because the thing he leaked or provided, I don’t know, however you want to say it, was unedited footage, so at least it appears to be unedited footage. So it’s like how could that be wrong? … I think she’s way off base legally on it, it looks bad in this view.

Threats to Release all Texts

Andy Signore: So they’re threatening to put out everything. They’re like, “We want to put out all the clips, all the texts, all the exchanges we’ve had.” He feels like at this point he’s destroyed publicly, so he wants to put it all out there. This first clip came out and part of me wonders was this on purpose to get Blake and Ryan to put the gag order. So it looks like, “Oh, they’re afraid.” Is this theatrics you think? Or do you think they really are ready and should just put it all out there if they’ve threatened to do so? What is your perspective on that?

Christopher Melcher : Well, it’s obviously working. I mean, it’s bothered her enough and Ryan to complain about it, which is also a PR mistake in my book because it’s like, well, hey, there’s unedited footage here or apparently unedited footage. How is she harmed by presenting this?

So obviously she’s bothered enough by it that she wants a court to issue a gag order, which it cannot do. Okay? So even under the rules she’s going, there’s no ability to really go to that extent in a state court action. They have a right to defend themselves and do some publicity. And also-

Blake’s Gag Order will be Rejected

Andy Signore: I don’t even mean to interrupt, but I want to reiterate that because she’s made so many mistakes. So you’re telling me there’s no chance she’s actually even going to get this gag order. So once again, she’s putting something out there that she knows isn’t going to happen.

Christopher Melcher: Yeah, there’s a right to speak. And so basically we do see gag orders in cases, typically in criminal cases because stakes are so much higher, and that’s to protect the criminal defendant because under the Sixth Amendment of the United States, the defendant has a right to a fair trial, and the prosecution’s release of information about the allegations in the criminal complaint can taint a jury pool.

So, we will see criminal case protective measures. We’ll also see them sometimes in very, very sensitive civil cases. I don’t see that here particularly since she is the one who has gone out there so publicly herself. And so if this was such a sensitive matter that even she would’ve done a Jane Doe, she would’ve never released her text messages, she would’ve said, “I am so embarrassed and I would be harmed if this information came out of here. I would be harmed even if I was identified.” We’ve seen that all the time in these cases.

Andy Signore: They’re traumatized.

Christopher Melcher: So she didn’t do anything that she’s full out there with her presentation, so she’s exposed. The court really only under extreme circumstances can stop somebody from speaking in advance. Really what they can do is maybe potentially punish somebody for speaking after the fact, but very rarely stop them. So again, this is like, “Oh, I’m so hurt. I’m so bothered. Please stop talking about me.” And again, in my book just makes her look worse. And the court really doesn’t have the authority to stop him or his lawyer from speaking.

Andy Signore: So he can still put all the text messages and everything out. Would you think that’s a smart move at this point? We’re in the public opinion. She took the first shot, he’s got nothing to hide. Is that a good move in your mind?

Christopher Melcher: Well, I think this is playing out in the media more than court. And so to the extent that he can defend himself, set the record straight. That’s smart.

Retaliation Claim in California

The thing though that he is really taking a risk on is this retaliation claim. So under California and federal law, once an employee or contractor, somebody in this protected position has made a complaint that they have suffered abuse in the workplace, they have protected status.

Even if the underlying complaint isn’t true or valid, they have protected status and they can’t be retaliated against. And she’s alleging retaliation. And here he’s got to be extremely careful because if whatever he’s doing is viewed as acts of retaliation against her for making the complaint in the first place, then he could suffer some liability. So he’s got smart counsel, they’ll navigate through that, but that’s where he’s at risk because of the nature of the allegations that are made against him.

Andy Signore: Always appreciate your insight. Speaking, which to end on this, the smart counsel here was the statement they said, “Sources connected to JB tell TMZ, they believe it’s grossly unfair to impose a gag order after Justin has been defamed by the New York Times in an article that they say has cost them three jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars. All Justin wants to do,” the source says, “is release video and text to prove the allegations are false. It’s unbelievable that Blake would go on a takedown campaign against Justin and then immediately turn around and say she wants a gag order so that Justin can’t defend himself.”

So they’re echoing that. It does seem like that’s what’s happening and that’s nice to hear that yes, he can respond to these text message and sort of do it, but as you’ve pointed out, and you just told me that early on, that is the biggest fear that he’s got to be careful of.

So we’ll see how this all plays out. But man, all I got to say is Blake Lively’s team is the worst at PR, like the worst at PR I’ve ever seen. And to that think that Justin could have paid for all this bad press that Blake’s getting. She really is delusional. No one can pay for this kind of press. This is all genuine.

People are really coming to their senses and not liking the way that Blake and now Ryan are treating this. It’s shocking to me how much they’ve sort of dug themselves deeper and deeper. So we’ll keep you posted. Thank you, Chris, for being here. Always make sure to follow him over on Twitter at @CA_Divorce.