Justin Baldoni’s former publicist Stephanie Jones is seeking to dismiss the actor-director’s counterclaims in the ongoing It Ends With Us legal drama with Blake Lively.
In a motion to dismiss, filed on Thursday, May 8, Jones slammed Baldoni and former employee Jennifer Abel’s “meritless” and “retaliatory” counterclaims.
“They are yet another effort at a smokescreen transparently leveraged to shift the limelight from Wayfarer and its founder’s bad acts,” the filing read, according to court documents obtained by Us Weekly, asking the court to dismiss the counterclaims with prejudice.
A second filing on Thursday referred to Abel’s counterclaims as a “a rotating game of whack-a-mole,” claiming that “the minute one baseless theory is debunked, another even more implausible theory pops up in its place.” The court docs also allege that Abel “abandons six of the misguided counterclaims she originally filed against Jones and Jonesworks.”
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Jones’ filing alleges that Abel is looking to “draw attention away from the text messages that she cannot and does not deny she wrote.” (Texts from Abel have been an ongoing point of contention in Baldoni and Lively’s ongoing legal battle.)
“Ms. Abel’s stream of procedural pivots and baseless allegations are finally catching up to her. Here she’s changed her entire strategy, dropping the bulk of her original claims and conjuring new, even further afield claims after her previous tries fell flat,” Kristin Tahler, Attorney for Jonesworks and Jones, shared in a statement with Us. “Try as she may, Ms. Abel’s ever-evolving case only reinforces how duplicitous she is – which is why she is in trouble in the first place.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Baldoni’s team for comment.
Jones filed a suit against Baldoni and Abel — who used to work for Jones’ Jonesworks PR — accusing them of orchestrating a smear campaign against Lively and for breach of contract
Months later, Baldoni added Jones’ name to his lawsuit. The March filing stated several counterclaims alleging that Jones took Abel’s work phone and gave it to Lively and her team. Baldoni and Abel further claimed that Lively’s team allegedly mined the phone for text messages to take out of context and made it appear that Baldoni was building a smear campaign against her. (The alleged smear campaign was originally cited in Lively’s initial December 2024 complaint against Baldoni.)
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Jones’ filing on Thursday alleged that the counterclaims against her are “devoid of any footing in law or reality” and are solely “a transparent vehicle to vent Wayfarer’s anger over the lawful exposure of its co-founder Justin Baldoni’s sexual harassment of costar Blake Lively, and his and Wayfarer’s retaliatory, vindictive smear campaign that followed.”
Attorney for Jonesworks and Jones Maaren Shah shared a separate statement with Us.
“Wayfarer and Mr. Baldoni are upset because they were caught red handed, and they’re lashing out with recycled attacks instead of a coherent legal argument,” the statement read. “It is not Ms. Jones’ fault that Wayfarer and Baldoni’s actions came to light through a lawfully-issued subpoena, nor is it her fault that their actions have been met so disfavorably. Our hope is that the defendant heeds his own advice and is ‘man enough’ to take accountability for his own misdeeds, including his and his company’s breach of contract with Jonesworks.”
