{"id":357636,"date":"2025-12-20T13:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T13:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/357636\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T13:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T13:04:09","slug":"blake-lively-justin-baldoni-plan-settlement-talks-in-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/357636\/","title":{"rendered":"Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni Plan Settlement Talks In January"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLawyers for Blake Lively<\/a> and Justin Baldoni<\/a> are officially talking about coming to some sort of settlement in the bitter and sprawling sex harassment and retaliation action the actress launched last year <\/a>against her It Ends With Us<\/a> co-star and his Wayfarer Studios inner circle.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, no one on either side has very high hopes that the parties can come to any deal before the May 2026 trial begins. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is a mix of going through the motions, fulfilling Judge (Lewis) Liman\u2019s order and putting the best foot forward,\u201d an individual close to the star-studded matter told Deadline this week as a settlement calendar appeared on the federal court docket. \u201cDon\u2019t be fooled. Everyone is preparing for the trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne thing is sure, Lively and Baldoni will be face-to-face in this settlement process, be it a charade or not. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe presence of each party (the client), in addition to counsel, is essential to the settlement process,\u201d Magistrate Judge Sarah Cave threw down in a December 18 order.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tWhat the settlement sessions are highly unlikely to produce is any actual settlement as Lively seeks around $500 million in damages from Team Baldoni and the Wayfarer crew. On the flip, Baldoni and crew also seem intent in getting their day in court to disprove the actress\u2019 allegations of misconduct during the production of the Sony distributed IEWU, and a preemptive online smear campaign that followed.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn December 9<\/a>, Judge Liman kicked the start of the trial two months down the road from its long established March date because of criminal cases that were piling up in the federal court system. At that same hearing, he strongly encouraged the parties to bring the volume down and try to work this all out without a trial. <\/p>\n

\n\tAs it stands right now, representatives for the Another Simple Favor star and the Man Enough podcast co-host will be meeting separately on January 23 with Judge Cave for a \u201ccounsel-only conference with counsel \u2026to discuss settlement.\u201d The back-to-back get togethers, with Lively\u2019s team of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Willkie Farr & Gallagher attorneys going first, will occur in Judge Cave\u2019s her New York courtroom in the morning next month.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiff to make a settlement demand to the Defendants (or reaffirm any prior demand) by Wednesday, January 28, 2026,\u201d wrote Judge Cave of Lively in a scheduling order Thursday. \u201cDefendants to inform Plaintiff of their response to the demand by Wednesday, February 4, 2026,\u201d she also noted of Baldoni and the Wayfarer defendants. <\/p>\n

\n\tNext up, as the movement towards the May 18 starting trial continues full-speed ahead on a parallel track, will be an all-hands on deck settlement conference on February 11 in front of Judge Cave. That session could see plaintiff Lively and defendants Baldoni, his Wayfarer CEO, co-founder and PR chiefs Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel all in court with defense lawyer Bryan Freedman<\/a> and the rest of the legal beagles.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt the settlement conference, counsel for each side should expect to make a succinct presentation (10\u201315 minutes) in the presence of all parties and the Court summarizing the issues counsel believes are important for the client(s).. of the opposing party to consider for purposes of formulating a settlement position,\u201d Judge Cave\u2019s order continues. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter the initial statements, counsel may respond and have their clients speak if they choose,\u201d she goes on to note. \u201cFollowing the presentations, the Court will meet separately with each side in private. In these meetings, the parties and their counsel must be prepared to inform the Court of the amount of attorneys\u2019 fees and expenses incurred to date, and an estimate of the remaining costs (including attorneys\u2019 fees) of litigating the case to judgment, including appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Ryan Reynolds<\/a>, Blake Lively, Taylor Swift<\/a> and Justin Baldoni Photos: Getty<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tIf a settlement fails to be achieved by Lively and Baldoni\u2019s lawyers, that May 2026 trial could see not just the IEWU co-stars testifying but also Lively\u2019s hubby Ryan Reynolds, his Deadpool & Wolverine co-star Hugh Jackman<\/a>, Taylor Swift (godmother to one of Lively and Reynolds\u2019 kids) and many other A-listers, along with Sony execs. The trial could also prove much more low-key (in relative terms) as the two sides grind it out over data analysis, tweet tracking and careful looks at BTS footage from IEWU to prove their respective points. <\/p>\n

\n\tNo surprise, reps for neither Baldoni nor Lively responded to Deadline\u2019s request for comment on the settlement scheduling orders from Judge Cave \u2013 which means they had nothing to say about any slim change of anyone coming to an agreement to end all this. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers for Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are officially talking about coming to some sort of settlement in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10682,154407,49,48,75,10797,48591,10683,154408,5204,7223],"class_list":["post-357636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-blake-lively","tag-bryan-freedman","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-hugh-jackman","tag-it-ends-with-us","tag-justin-baldoni","tag-lively-baldoni","tag-ryan-reynolds","tag-taylor-swift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357636","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=357636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}