Justin Baldoni counter-sues former publicist

Abel “realized Jones had double-crossed her — in a very serious way,” reads the suit (via Variety). “By refusing to release Abel’s phone number, Jonesworks had usurped her contact information and cut off Abel’s access to critical accounts protected by two-factor authentication linked to that phone number. As a result, Abel lost access to her iCloud (including all her text messages, photos, and contacts), bank accounts, utilities, insurance, and virtually every other sensitive account. By contrast, Jones now had unrestricted access to everything stored on Abel’s phone — her text messages, emails, personal photos.”

Back when the NYT report came out, Lively’s team claimed they got the communications from Jones under a subpoena—a suspicious assertion given that there was no active lawsuit at the time. This new suit makes those suspicions explicit, calling it a “deliberate and unlawful disclosure of their private information.” In a statement to Variety, Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman said, “It is undeniable that Stephanie Jones initiated this catastrophic sequence of events by violating the most basic of privacy rights, as well as any remaining trust her clients held. No stranger to stirring up crisis scenarios for departing clients, Ms. Jones maliciously turned over communications from the phone she wrongfully took from her own partner to her cohort, [Lively’s personal publicist] Leslie Sloane, immediately after Jones was terminated for cause by Wayfarer due to her own wrongful behavior.” 

He added: “Stephanie Jones, founder of Jonesworks, has a well-documented history of highly questionable conduct in the workplace, which the Lively parties would have seen with even the smallest amount of online research, yet they walked right into Ms. Jones’ ploy of bitter revenge against her most-trusted employee at the expense of her own long-term client. We will not stop until our clients are cleared of all wrongdoing and compensated for the vast damages that they have incurred.”

At this point a visual map of who is suing who and for what would be a useful tool. This black hole has sucked in stars, their spouses, their publicists, the publicists’ contractors, and the New York freakin’ Times. The suit against Jones is the sixth that has been filed; Jones herself actually filed the first one in December, accusing Baldoni of breach of contract. In his new suit, Baldoni makes clear he and his company Wayfarer Studios considered Jones’ behavior in breach of their agreement even before they knew about her handing the phone over to Lively. It’s clear we haven’t yet reached the bottom of the It Ends With Us well. You can read more details of the latest lawsuit here.