Blake Lively can recover some legal costs from actor and director Justin Baldoni, but not punitive damages or other relief she sought after settling their legal dispute over the 2024 film It Ends With Us, a judge ruled Friday.
Judge Lewis J. Liman said Lively is entitled to legal fees and costs linked to her defense against a countersuit Baldoni filed after she sued him in December 2024.
In his ruling, Liman cited a California law aimed at protecting survivors of sexual harassment and discrimination from retaliatory lawsuits intended to silence or intimidate them.
The law requires plaintiffs to pay defendants’ legal costs if a defamation claim brought in response to a lawsuit is dismissed, even if evidence in the case has not been fully developed.
Liman said the only exception would be if Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios LLC, could prove that Lively acted with malice when she sued him. He said that Baldoni and Wayfarer had provided little evidence to support such a claim and none establishing that she had acted with malice.
A method for calculating legal fees was not addressed by the judge, and he rejected her claims to triple any damages and pursue punitive damages as well under the California law, saying that they did not fall within “carefully crafted federal procedural rules designed to protect the rights of the parties.”
Lively and Baldoni settled the bulk of their dispute last month just as a trial was about to start on Lively’s retaliation claims. She received no money from the deal but was permitted to pursue legal fees.
Lawyers on both sides did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and retaliation, along with his production company, in late 2024. She said the actor engineered an effort to damage her public reputation and credibility.
Baldoni, who directed the dark romantic drama and starred in it with Lively, denied harassing her or orchestrating a smear campaign. He claimed the complaints about his behavior were made up by Lively as part of an effort to seize creative control of the movie. He countersued, accusing Lively and her husband, Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds, of defamation and extortion.
Liman threw out Baldoni’s countersuit last year and then dismissed Lively’s sexual harassment claims weeks ago, saying she could not bring them because she was an independent contractor rather than an employee on the movie set.
“It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel about a relationship devolving into domestic violence, was released in August 2024 and exceeded box office expectations.
Lively appeared in the 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and the TV series Gossip Girl from 2007 to 2012 before starring in films including The Town and The Shallows.
Baldoni starred in the TV comedy Jane the Virgin, directed the 2019 film Five Feet Apart and wrote Man Enough, a book challenging traditional notions of masculinity.
