Justin Baldoni now sued by ex-publicist amid legal battle with It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively

Justin Baldoni's former publicist has filed a lawsuit against him for breach of contract - amid his legal battle with his former co-star Blake Lively.

Lively sued Baldoni last week, accusing him of sexually harassing her and fostering a toxic work environment on the set of their movie It Ends With Us, in which he both directed her and acted with her. He has staunchly denied the allegations.

In her complaint, Lively claimed Baldoni worked to tarnish her reputation with a team that included his publicist Jennifer Abel and crisis PR expert Melissa Nathan, who previously worked with Johnny Depp. Abel has denied waging a 'smear campaign.'

Now Baldoni, his company Wayfarer Studios, Nathan and Abel are all being sued by Abel's former boss Stephanie Jones, the head of Jonesworks PR.

Abel represented Baldoni while working for Jonesworks, but was allegedly fired last summer after Jones discovered she was 'stealing documents and client information' from the firm in aid of a plot to start a rival company, according to a copy of Jones' lawsuit obtained by DailyMail.com.

Jones accuses Abel of conniving with Nathan 'to steal Baldoni and Wayfarer as clients from Jonesworks, and to smear Jones and Jonesworks in the press' - such as by blaming Jones for the alleged PR takedown of Lively.

'For months, this group has gaslit and disparaged Stephanie Jones and her company for financial gain, to settle personal scores and most recently to distract from their disgraceful smearing of Blake Lively,' Jones' attorney Kristin Tahler said in a statement provided to DailyMail.com.

'This lawsuit is a necessary step to stop defendants’ continuing misconduct and for Steph to recover the reputation she has worked decades to establish and which the defendants disparaged for their own nefarious purposes.'

DailyMail.com has reached out to a representative for Baldoni for comment. 

Lively's lawsuit contains a raft of accusations against Baldoni, whom she says showed her nude images and videos of other women, 'improvised physical intimacy' during a scene without prior discussion, entered her trailer while she was 'nude' and allowed his 'friends' to watch her filming sex scenes.

In the run-up to the movie's August 9 release, rumors began swirling of a rift between Lively and Baldoni - and Lively now claims that around this time, Nathan and Abel worked for Baldoni on a targeted strategy to vilify her.

Late last summer, Lively repeatedly went viral online as social media users slammed her 'mean girl' behavior in interviews, a trend she now insists was the result of a campaign of 'astroturfing' waged by Baldoni's PR team.

Echoing Lively's suit, Jones claims in her own legal filing that Nathan and Abel orchestrated 'a smear campaign against Lively to benefit Baldoni and Wayfarer.'

She further claimed that Nathan and Abel schemed 'to publicly pin blame for this smear campaign on Jones - when Jones had no knowledge or involvement in it.'

Lively's legal complaint included purported screen-grabs of text messages, many of them between Nathan and Abel, allegedly showing the PR takedown being planned.

In her own legal suit, Jones includes several alleged screen grabs of texts between Abel and Nathan, said to be from Abel's Jonesworks company phone.

The messages show Abel and Nathan conspiring to poach Baldoni and Wayfarer from Jonesworks - as well as Abel contemptuously mocking Baldoni.

'I can't stand him,' Abel is said to have texted Nathan in reference to Baldoni. 'He's so pompous. A men's retreat during release, is he crazy?! And being off the grid for the summer because he's so overworked... like calm down. You're not that important and nobody gives a s*** how hard your life is.'

Jones' legal documents say the texts were 'forensically extracted directly from the company phone that Abel used during her employment at Jonesworks,' which is said to have been 'voluntarily returned to Jonesworks upon her termination' with an employment lawyer present.

In her lawsuit, Jones says Abel plotted to poach clients from her and to damage her reputation in the PR business - and even allegedly egged on 'almost half of Jonesworks's employees' to take jobs elsewhere, as a result of which two people supposedly did leave the company 'to work for competitors.'

Since her departure from Jonesworks over the summer, Abel kept representing Wayfarer, this time via her own company. 

Jones' lawsuit went public just hours after Abel bloke her silence on the unfolding drama in a statement denying that she and Nathan launched a 'smear' campaign.

'What the cherry picked messages don't include, although not shockingly as it doesn't fit the narrative, is that there was no "smear" implemented,' she wrote.

'No negative press was ever facilitated, no social combat plan, although we were prepared for it as it's our job to be ready for any scenario. But we didn't have to implement anything because the internet was doing the work for us.'

She claims the messages merely show that she and Nathan joked and 'sophomorically reveled' in genuine social media reactions to Lively.

Baldoni's lawyer Bryan Freedman has similarly maintained: 'What is pointedly missing from the cherry-picked correspondence is the evidence that there were no proactive measures taken with media or otherwise; just internal scenario planning and private correspondence to strategize which is standard operating procedure with public relations professionals.'

Since news of Lively's lawsuit broke on Saturday, Baldoni's career has imploded, as he was dropped by his agency William Morris Endeavor and his podcast co-host Liz Plank announced she was quitting the show.

Lively, who is married to Deadpool lead Ryan Reynolds and who is close friends with pop superstar Taylor Swift, has seen former colleagues rally around her.

Her It Ends With Us co-stars Brandon Sklenar and Jenny Slate have spoken out to support her, as has Colleen Hoover, author of the novel on which the film is based.