Blake Lively demands her 'day in court' as Justin Baldoni aims to toss lawsuit
Published in Entertainment News
NEW YORK — A heavily redacted new filing from Blake Lively calls on a New York judge to forge ahead with her March 2026 trial against her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star Justin Baldoni, lest he “avoid accountability” for the sexual harassment and retaliatory smear campaign allegedly waged against the actress.
The new filing aims to ensure Baldoni and his associates at Wayfarer Studios don’t get to “deny Blake Lively her day in court,” Variety reports.
“Defendants created a hostile environment, and when confronted with complaints, they abandoned Wayfarer’s policies by refusing to investigate the concerns,” reads the filing. It argues that Baldoni and his production company instead went “on the attack, claiming that they are the victims of a ‘bully’ who ‘fabricated’ complaints to ‘take over the movie.'”
Lively’s camp highlights “the irony that this purportedly hijacked film — which grossed $148.5 million stateside and $351 million worldwide — “enriched the Wayfarer Defendants by smashing all box office expectations.”
The latest filing comes nearly a year after Lively alleged misconduct by Baldoni in a civil rights complaint just before Christmas 2024, followed shortly thereafter by a formal lawsuit.
In January, Baldoni — who denies the accusations — filed a $250 million libel lawsuit against The New York Times for its coverage of Lively’s allegations, and a $400 million defamation lawsuit against the actress, her husband Ryan Reynolds and publicist Leslie Sloane.
Baldoni’s suits were officially tossed out in late October and last month, his lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment in the hopes that Judge Lewis Liman would also dismiss Lively’s suit, which they claim serves as a “litany of minor grievances” rather than evidence of harassment.
They also maintain that Baldoni’s decision to enlist a crisis PR team doesn’t prove Lively’s claims but instead was what “any responsible person in his position would do” to counter her allegations.
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