Blake Lively demanded USD 8 million in legal costs from the actor and director Justin Baldoni after resolving their dispute over the intense production of their 2024 film ‘It Ends With Us’.Lively’s lawyers disclosed the amount, which covers nearly USD 7.5 million in attorney fees from two law firms representing her and about USD 500,000 in other costs, in a court filing on Tuesday.
Blake Lively’s lawyers are asking Justin Baldoni to pay up
One of Lively’s lawyers, Michael Gottlieb, wrote in a court declaration that he charged her an average hourly rate of USD 2,187 – a discount from his usual USD 2,795 per hour. He said he billed 224 hours for working on his defense of Baldoni’s countersuit, costing USD 457,000 in fees.Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios LLC, “employed scorched-earth litigation tactics designed to drain Lively’s resources,” her attorneys wrote in their filing.“They could have ended it (and offered to pay Lively) at any time. Having refused to do so, they should be ordered to pay Lively for all costs, attorney’s fees, and expenses that they wrongly forced her to spend,” they wrote.
Still judge to approve the amount
In allowing Lively to recover legal expenses, the judge cited a California law designed to protect survivors of sexual harassment and discrimination from retaliatory lawsuits aimed at intimidating and silencing victims.Liman said the law requires that the plaintiff must pay the defendant’s legal fees and costs if a defamation claim made in response to a lawsuit is dismissed, even if the facts of the case have not been developed through the gathering of evidence.Liman said that an exception would be if Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios could prove that malice was the cause of Lively’s claims, but that they had not produced any evidence to show that.The judge still has to approve the amount he is seeking.
The judge rejected the claim for triple damages
In their court filing, Lively’s lawyers said USD 4.5 million should be paid to Gottlieb’s firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and about USD 3 million should go to the firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.The judge rejected Lively’s claims to triple any damages and pursue punitive damages as well under California law, saying they did not fall within “carefully crafted rules of federal procedure designed to protect the rights of the parties.”
Blake Lively and Justin Bald
Lively and Baldoni settled last month before a trial began in federal court in Manhattan over Lively’s claims that he engineered an effort to damage her public reputation and credibility after she was accused of sexually harassing him while shooting the movie.Baldoni, who directed the dark romantic drama and starred in it alongside Lively, denied her claims.Lively received no money in the settlement, but a judge later ruled that she was entitled to recover some of the legal costs she incurred after Baldoni filed a countersuit against her.
About Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s legal dispute
Lively, 38, sued Baldoni, 42, and Wayfarer Studios in December 2024, accusing them of conspiring with publicists to preemptively destroy her reputation after she privately accused him of sexual harassment on the set of “It Ends With Us.”Weeks later, Baldoni sued Lively, accusing her, her husband – the ‘Deadpool’ actor Ryan Reynolds – and their publicist for defamation and extortion.Baldoni denied that he was harassed or orchestrated a smear campaign. He claimed that complaints about his behavior were made by Lively as part of an effort to gain creative control of the movie.Judge Lewis J. Liman threw out Baldoni’s countersuit last year and then dismissed Lively’s sexual harassment claims, saying she could not bring them because she was an independent contractor rather than an employee on the movie set.
About ‘It Ends Us’
‘It Ends With Us’, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel about a relationship that turns into domestic violence, was released in August 2024 and exceeded expectations at the box office.