Vanzan Lawsuit Explained: Complaint, Subpoena, and Sham Claim

The Vanzan lawsuit was a short-lived New York State Supreme Court action filed on September 27, 2024, by Vanzan, Inc., a Delaware holding company owned by Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. It named ten unidentified “John Doe” defendants and alleged breach of contract, breach of good faith and fair dealing, and faithless servant claims. Four days after filing, Lively’s legal team used the case to subpoena a public relations firm for text messages tied to Justin Baldoni’s team. The suit was voluntarily dismissed on December 19, 2024, without any defendant ever being named or served.¹

Who Vanzan, Inc. Is

Vanzan is a Delaware entity formed in 2010. Blake Lively is listed as its CEO and sole officer.¹ The company acts as the employer of record for Lively and Reynolds’s household staff, including nannies, drivers, security personnel, and assistants, all of whom sign nondisclosure agreements.²

Vanzan had no direct connection to the film It Ends With Us or to Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios. That gap between the plaintiff and the film later became a central point in the fight over whether the suit was legitimate.³

What the Complaint Alleged

The complaint alleged that unnamed individuals inside Lively and Reynolds’s personal and professional circle had betrayed duties owed to Vanzan by disclosing confidential information to third parties, failing to alert the company about conduct meant to cause “irreparable harm,” and acting in bad faith for personal benefit.²

Three causes of action were pleaded: breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and faithless servant, a New York doctrine that applies when an employee or agent betrays their principal. All ten defendants were listed as “John Does.” No specific person was identified. Baldoni’s team would later note that the complaint “asserted three causes of action against only ‘Doe defendants,’ provided no specific allegations, and was never served on any party.”³

The Subpoena to Jonesworks

On October 1, 2024, four days after filing, Lively’s lawyers issued a civil subpoena in the Vanzan case to Jonesworks LLC, the PR firm owned by Stephanie Jones.¹ The subpoena sought data from a company-issued phone that had belonged to Jennifer Abel, a former Jonesworks publicist who had handled PR for Baldoni and Wayfarer.⁴

Abel had surrendered the phone weeks earlier. On August 21, 2024, she was summoned to the Jonesworks office and met by a security guard and an attorney. Jones’s chief of staff demanded the device after learning Abel was leaving to start her own firm. Jones was not present.⁵ Jonesworks maintained that Abel had been terminated for cause and that the phone was company property, which the firm forensically preserved and examined after the subpoena arrived.⁴

What the Texts Showed

The phone contained messages among Abel, crisis PR manager Melissa Nathan, and Baldoni. Lively’s team would use them to allege that Baldoni’s publicists ran a coordinated campaign to discredit her after she raised workplace concerns during the film’s production. The texts reportedly captured Abel and Nathan discussing publicity strategy for It Ends With Us while privately calling Baldoni “pompous” and “unlikeable.”⁴

Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s attorney, disputed the completeness of the produced records, saying “certain texts are incomplete and other texts, which tell the truth, are purposefully excluded.”⁵

Dismissal and What Followed

Vanzan voluntarily dismissed the suit on December 19, 2024. No defendant was ever identified, served, or substituted for a Doe placeholder.¹

The next day, December 20, Lively filed an 80-page administrative complaint with the California Civil Rights Department alleging sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign by Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and producer Jamey Heath. That complaint drew on the text messages obtained through the Vanzan subpoena. Eleven days later, on December 31, 2024, she filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York with thirteen causes of action.⁶ Lively’s attorneys said she “voluntarily disclosed the subpoena in her first filing.”¹

The Fight Over Whether Vanzan Was a “Sham”

In April 2025, the Vanzan filing became its own contested issue when Abel filed amended counterclaims in Jones v. Abel (No. 1:25-cv-00779, S.D.N.Y.), a separate breach-of-contract case between Jones and her former employees. Abel alleged that Jones and Jonesworks had colluded with the “Lively Parties” to file the Vanzan suit as a pretext, with the sole purpose of issuing subpoenas for her phone data without giving her notice or the chance to object.⁷

Freedman went further in public statements, calling the Vanzan action a “sham lawsuit” designed to “obtain subpoena power without oversight or scrutiny.” He argued it denied his clients the ability to challenge the subpoenas’ scope and called the filing “a flagrant abuse of process,” adding that “officers of the court have a duty of candor to the court and an obligation not to file fictitious lawsuits that have no basis in fact or law.”¹

Lively’s attorneys, Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb, responded that the Vanzan lawsuit was part of a “conscientious and thorough investigation” that used “common tools such as Doe lawsuits and civil subpoenas that are entirely lawful and appropriate for pursuing claims and uncovering the identity of unknown perpetrators.”¹ Jones’s attorney, Kristin Tahler, described the production of the text messages as a response to a “court-ordered subpoena” and denied any collusion, saying Jones was being made a “scapegoat.”⁵

What the Court Has Said About the Subpoena

On October 3, 2025, Judge Lewis J. Liman ruled on Abel’s counterclaims. He dismissed her Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim with prejudice, finding her damages allegations conclusory and short of the statute’s $5,000 threshold. Her Stored Communications Act claim was dismissed without prejudice because she had not adequately alleged that the messages were accessed while in “electronic storage” rather than directly from the device. The court also signaled that her Federal Wiretap Act claim failed because she did not allege the messages were intercepted “in flight.” Abel was given until October 31, 2025, to amend several claims.⁷

No court has ruled on whether the Vanzan filing itself was improper. The suit was voluntarily dismissed before any defendant appeared, and the question of its purpose has been argued only through later filings and public statements.

Where the Larger Case Landed

The text messages pulled through the Vanzan subpoena fed the litigation that followed. On April 2, 2026, Judge Liman dismissed ten of Lively’s thirteen federal claims, including all sexual harassment allegations, ruling that she was an independent contractor rather than an employee and could not sue under Title VII. Three claims survived: retaliation under California law against It Ends With Us Movie LLC and Wayfarer Studios, aiding and abetting retaliation against The Agency Group PR LLC, and breach of a contract rider.⁸

On May 4, 2026, roughly two weeks before trial, Lively and the Wayfarer defendants announced a settlement. A joint statement acknowledged that “the process presented challenges” and that Lively’s concerns “deserved to be heard.”⁹ The Jones v. Abel case, which still carries the live dispute over how the Vanzan subpoena and Abel’s phone data were handled, remained a separate ongoing matter.¹⁰

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Deadline. Justin Baldoni Blake Lively Lawsuit Sham
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More With MJ. The Truth About Blake Lively Justin
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Deadline. Justin Baldoni Counterclaims Blake Lively Smear Campaign
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Forbes. Justin Baldonis Former Publicist Sues Actor PR Team Over Blake Lively Controversy
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Variety. Blake Lively Justin Baldoni Bombshell Text Messages Subpoena
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Deadline. Blake Lively Justin Baldoni Feud Timeline
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Justia. Jones v. Abel, No. 1:2025cv00779
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U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y. Opinion and Order, Lively v. Wayfarer Studios LLC
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The New York Times. Blake Lively Justin Baldoni Settlement
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Deadline. Blake Lively Settlement Details Justin Baldoni