Fallout from the Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni legal saga has produced yet another lawsuit.
Showbiz reporter James Vituscka is suing his former employer, the Daily Mail, claiming they terminated him after he became embroiled in the Lively-Baldoni drama.
According to court docs obtained by Page Six Tuesday, Vituscka was named in the high-profile litigation after discussing the “It Ends With Us” fallout with both Lively’s longtime publicist and Baldoni’s representatives.
After his texts were used in court papers, Vituscka wanted to hire his own legal representation to defend himself, but alleges that the Daily Mail discouraged him from doing so. Instead, he claims, per the court docs, that the outlet “pressured” him to sign a declaration with language he was not comfortable with, like stating he “regretted” the actions that led to his involvement.
The Mail is “categorically” denying the allegations and Vituscka’s account of what transpired. In a statement to Page Six, the news outlet blasted his lawsuit as “an inaccurate account of the circumstances surrounding the declaration he signed in connection with the Lively-Baldoni litigation.”
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Vituscka’s suit, filed Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court, alleges whistleblower retaliation, sex and disability discrimination, sexual harassment, interference with protected rights and wrongful termination. He is seeking damages, including lost wages, emotional-distress damages and punitive damages.
Per the court docs, Vituscka was covering the “It Ends With Us” drama as a senior US entertainment reporter when he alleges that the Mail tried to control him.
According to his lawsuit, Lively’s longtime publicist, Leslie Sloane, allegedly told him in August 2024 that Baldoni was the source of tension on the set — but never told him that Baldoni had sexually harassed or assaulted Lively.
After Lively filed a sexual-harassment complaint against Baldoni in December 2024, Vituscka alleges that he texted Baldoni’s PR crisis manager, Melissa Nathan, about the apparent discrepancy.
In the exchange, Vituscka accidentally used the phrase “sexually assaulted” rather than “sexually harassed,” but says he subsequently made clear that Sloane had never told him anything about sexual harassment.
Those texts later became part of Baldoni’s legal filings, thrusting Vituscka into the middle of the increasingly bitter litigation. Vituscka claims his words were selectively quoted and stripped of context, and he was subsequently subpoenaed to provide documents and testimony. The subpoena then set off a dispute with the Daily Mail over how he should respond, the lawsuit claims.
He alleges the Mail retaliated against him, changing the way his work was supervised before firing him in June 2025. The complaint had not yet been reviewed by the County Clerk at publication time.
“At no point did Daily Mail pressure James to sign a declaration he believed to be untrue,” the outlet told us in a statement.
“In fact, the declaration he signed was consistent with what he had already told senior management after the Baldoni complaint first came to our attention. As a trusted news organization, we expect our journalists to act with honesty and integrity, and we rely upon that important expectation.”
The Daily Mail concluded the statement by alleging that Vituscka’s “claims that he is a ‘whistleblower’ who suffered ‘retaliation,’ ‘harassment,’ ‘discrimination’ or other unlawful treatment are entirely meritless and unsupported by the facts, and we are confident they will be soundly dismissed.”
