The Blake Lively v. Justin Baldoni case generated 12 discovery motions, a sanctions filing, an adverse inference request, and a $400,000 attorney fee award — all before a single juror was seated. The Signal app at the center of it all is the eDiscovery lesson every organization needs to hear.
The fight over what happened on the set of It Ends With Us captivated the internet for months. But for legal teams, the more instructive story has always been what happened in discovery. Blake Lively sued Justin Baldoni in December 2024, alleging sexual harassment and a coordinated smear campaign. What followed was one of the most publicly documented discovery battles in recent memory — twelve separate discovery motions, an allegation of deliberate evidence destruction, a request for adverse inference sanctions, and a federal judge awarding Lively $400,000 in attorney fees just five days ago, on August 26, 2026.
The central discovery allegation was this: Baldoni's team, anticipating litigation, moved key communications to Signal, an app that automatically erases messages, to discuss matters connected to the case. Lively's attorneys alleged that conversations about the alleged smear campaign were deliberately moved to an auto-deleting platform and evidence was destroyed. They filed for sanctions and asked the court to issue an adverse inference instruction — telling the jury to assume the deleted messages contained incriminating evidence.
The case ultimately settled in May 2026. But the discovery record it left behind is a textbook example of every mistake an organization can make when litigation is anticipated and the instinct is to reach for an encrypted app rather than a legal hold.
The legal problem with moving communications to Signal when litigation is anticipated is not primarily about the messages that are deleted. It is about what the deletion itself reveals. Courts treat the decision to switch to an auto-deleting platform after a dispute arises as evidence — evidence of consciousness of guilt, of intent to deprive the opposing party of information, of a deliberate choice to destroy what the law required to be preserved.
Lively's attorneys filed a 30-page memorandum arguing that despite the defendants' alleged efforts to destroy records, substantial evidence remained proving that the retaliatory campaign was carried out as planned. They accused Baldoni's camp of violating court orders and destroying or withholding critical evidence, and asked Judge Liman to issue an adverse inference ruling — allowing jurors to presume that the deleted messages contained incriminating information.
The timing of the alleged switch to Signal made the spoliation argument particularly powerful. Baldoni allegedly switched to Signal in August 2024 — precisely when tensions escalated on set about the film's premiere and marketing strategy. That timing is not coincidental to a court. It is the evidence of anticipation of litigation — the legal threshold that triggers the duty to preserve. Switching to an auto-deleting platform at exactly that moment is, in a court's eyes, equivalent to shredding documents after receiving notice of a lawsuit.
Switching to Signal when litigation becomes foreseeable is not a privacy choice in the eyes of a court. It is a preservation failure — and the absence of those messages becomes the most powerful evidence of all.
The Baldoni team's alleged decision to move communications to Signal is not unusual. Organizations of every size use Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and other encrypted messaging platforms with auto-delete features for routine business communications. The apps are convenient, they feel secure, and many employees use them without any awareness of the discovery implications. The problem arises when those communications become relevant to litigation — and the organization has no process for preserving them.
The legal hold that most organizations issue when litigation is anticipated addresses email. It may address text messages. It rarely addresses encrypted messaging apps explicitly. And even when it does, the practical challenge of preserving messages from platforms designed to delete them requires specific technical approaches — MDM controls, third-party archiving tools, or manual backup processes — that most organizations have not implemented.
What the Lively v. Baldoni case demonstrates is that the failure to address this gap does not make the messages disappear from litigation. It makes the absence of those messages the central issue in litigation. Twelve discovery motions. A sanctions filing. An adverse inference request that would have told the jury to assume the worst. The messages were gone. The damage they caused to the case was not.
The Lively v. Baldoni case is unusual in its visibility — few discovery disputes generate this level of public attention. But the specific failures it illustrates are among the most common we encounter in practice. Legal hold notices that do not mention Signal. Custodian interviews that do not ask about encrypted messaging app usage. Organizations that treat WhatsApp as a personal tool even when it is used for business communications that are directly relevant to anticipated litigation.
At Sovereign Discovery, encrypted messaging app preservation is a first-class concern in every matter. The legal hold we issue names specific platforms. The custodian interview we conduct asks specifically about encrypted app usage. And the advice we give to every client facing anticipated litigation is the same advice Baldoni's team did not follow: do not switch to a disappearing-message platform after a dispute arises. Whatever those messages contain is less damaging than their absence.
The Lively v. Baldoni case settled. The Signal messages are gone permanently. And on August 26, 2026, a federal judge awarded Blake Lively $400,000 in attorney fees — a direct consequence of a litigation strategy that treated discovery as an obstacle rather than an obligation.
The lesson is not about Hollywood. It is about the moment when a dispute becomes foreseeable and the instinct is to reach for an encrypted app. That instinct is legally catastrophic. The messages you delete do not protect you. Their absence accuses you.