NEW YORK \u2014 Blake Lively is seeking millions of dollars in damages and attorneys\u2019 fees from her \u201cIt Ends With Us\u201d director and co-star Justin Baldoni, over his since-dismissed \u201cbaseless\u201d $400 million defamation lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The \u201cGossip Girl\u201d alum claimed in late 2024 that Baldoni sexually harassed her on the set of their film and launched a retaliatory smear campaign, both of which he denies.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Lively filed a motion seeking attorneys\u2019 fees, treble damages and punitive damages<\/a> from Baldoni under a California statute that makes privileged any \u201ccommunication \u2026 regarding an incident of sexual assault, harassment or discrimination [including retaliation],\u201d<\/a> and \u201cremedy the substantial harm\u201d incurred amid the legal battle, according to court documents obtained by Variety.<\/p>\n Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios, which produced the film, \u201cstoked the flames of public sentiment, posting their retaliatory lawsuit on a public website \u2026 to flood the zone with vicious character attacks on Ms. Lively designed to damage her credibility and to conceal their own unlawful acts\u201d and \u201csue Ms. Lively into oblivion,’\u201d reads the filing.<\/p>\n When tossing Baldoni\u2019s countersuit against Lively<\/a> in June \u2014 along with his $250 million libel lawsuit against The New York Times <\/a>\u2014 Judge Lewis Liman \u201cdid not rule on whether Ms. Lively\u2019s alleged statements were privileged\u201d under the statute \u201cor whether Ms. Lively acted with actual malice,\u201d as Baldoni\u2019s camp has claimed.<\/p>\n Liman did, however, permit Lively to \u201crenew\u201d her motion for the fees and damages under the statute.<\/p>\n Lively\u2019s lawsuit is heading to trial in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Blake Lively is seeking millions of dollars in damages and attorneys\u2019 fees from her \u201cIt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[73955,10682,49,48,361,73956,38396,75,10683,19498,73953,73954],"class_list":["post-136147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-attorneys-fees","tag-blake-lively","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-damages","tag-defamation-lawsuit","tag-entertainment","tag-justin-baldoni","tag-millions-of-dollars","tag-punitive-damages","tag-treble-damages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}