\u2022 A federal judge formally ended Justin Baldoni\u2019s $400-million countersuit against Blake Lively after he and his company, Wayfarer Studios, missed a deadline to refile.
\u2022 The judge had dismissed the case in June but left the door open for an amended complaint; when none was filed, he made the dismissal final while allowing Lively\u2019s request for attorneys\u2019 fees to proceed.
\u2022 Lively\u2019s own lawsuit accusing Baldoni of sexual misconduct and retaliation remains active, with a trial set for March 2026.<\/p>\n
A federal judge has officially shut down Justin Baldoni\u2019s $400-million countersuit<\/a> against Blake Lively \u2014 the latest development in a long and bitter legal feud<\/a> that has shadowed their movie \u201cIt Ends With Us.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge Lewis Liman entered the ruling on Friday after Baldoni and his company, Wayfarer Studios, missed an Oct. 17 deadline to revive their case. The judge had dismissed the lawsuit in June but left the door open for Baldoni to refile. When no amended complaint was submitted, Liman moved to close the case for good. Lively was the only party to respond, asking that the dismissal be made final while keeping her request for attorneys\u2019 fees active \u2014 which the court granted.<\/p>\n The legal battle between the two began nearly a year earlier, when Lively filed a lawsuit in December 2024 accusing Baldoni of sexual misconduct<\/a> and of waging a smear campaign after tensions on the set of \u201cIt Ends With Us,\u201d the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover\u2019s bestselling novel. Baldoni, who directed and co-starred in the movie, denied the allegations and in January countersued Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and their publicist Leslie Sloane for defamation and extortion, seeking $400 million in damages.<\/p>\n In a separate filing, Baldoni also sued the New York Times for $250 million<\/a> over its coverage of Lively\u2019s claims. Liman dismissed both suits on June 9, ruling that Lively\u2019s harassment allegations were legally protected under California\u2019s Protecting Survivors From Weaponized Defamation Lawsuits Act<\/a> (AB 933) \u2014 a law enacted in the wake of the #MeToo movement \u2014 and that Baldoni had not shown the defendants acted with \u201cserious doubts\u201d about the truth of her statements.<\/p>\n At the time of that June ruling, Lively\u2019s attorneys called the decision \u201ca total victory and a complete vindication.\u201d Lively wrote on Instagram that she had \u201cfelt the pain of a retaliatory lawsuit\u201d but was \u201cmore resolved than ever to stand for every woman\u2019s right to have a voice.\u201d Baldoni\u2019s attorney, Bryan Freedman, also in June rejected that framing, calling Lively\u2019s declaration of victory \u201cfalse\u201d and insisting his client had been targeted by \u201cfalse accusations.\u201d<\/p>\n Reps for Baldoni and Wayfarer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n By letting the appeal deadline pass, Baldoni effectively ended his own challenge to Lively\u2019s legal protections under California\u2019s survivor protection law, leaving the June dismissal and her earlier court victory fully intact.<\/p>\n Friday\u2019s order makes the dismissal of Baldoni\u2019s case final unless he appeals. Lively\u2019s own lawsuit, the one that started the dispute, remains active and is scheduled for trial in March 2026. That case will determine whether her harassment and retaliation claims move forward to a jury, meaning the core of the dispute is still to be litigated next year.<\/p>\n For now, only one side of the \u201cIt Ends With Us\u201d legal battle has truly ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2022 A federal judge formally ended Justin Baldoni\u2019s $400-million countersuit against Blake Lively after he and his company,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[43769,93456,1374,3735,434,39484,78973,21315,18,117,14078,19,17,33381,93457,10019,43204,93458,93459,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-161130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-attorney","9":"tag-baldoni","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-case","12":"tag-celebrities","13":"tag-claim","14":"tag-dismissal","15":"tag-dispute","16":"tag-eire","17":"tag-entertainment","18":"tag-friday","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-judge","22":"tag-june","23":"tag-lawsuit","24":"tag-lively","25":"tag-m-countersuit","26":"tag-total-victory","27":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115487865958801236","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}