{"id":472185,"date":"2025-10-03T22:44:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T22:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/472185\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T22:44:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T22:44:17","slug":"the-gray-lady-strikes-back-justin-baldoni-hit-up-by-new-york-times-for-blake-lively-suit-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/472185\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gray Lady Strikes Back! Justin Baldoni Hit Up By New York Times For Blake Lively Suit Fees"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than three months after Justin Baldoni\u2019s $400 million defamation suit against Blake Lively, the New York Times, Ryan Reynolds and others was tossed out<\/a>, the Gray Lady wants the It Ends With Us director to cough up some cash.<\/p>\n

Around $150,000 in attorney\u2019s fees, damages and more, actually.<\/p>\n

More from Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe District Court\u2019s opinion makes clear that Wayfarer and its affiliates both commenced and continued the lawsuit against The Times without a substantial basis in fact and law,\u201d states a September 30 filing<\/a> in New York state court from the NYT and its in-house counsel.<\/p>\n

After an initial $250 million action against the Times, Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios wrapped the paper into its January countersuit against his IEWU co-star Lively, her Deadpool spouse Reynolds and her publicist Leslie Sloane over Lively\u2019s sexual harassment and retaliation allegations <\/a>first reported to California\u2019s Civil Rights Department late last year ahead of a lawsuit filed on New Year\u2019s Eve. The NYT dropped a deeply researched story on Lively\u2019s CRD filing on December 21, just hours after it was handed over to the Golden State division.<\/p>\n

After issuing a comprehensive 132-page order June 9 dismissing the Wayfarer countersuit<\/a> that threw shade on journalistic ethics and more left, right and center, Judge Lewis Liman gave Baldoni, his execs, financiers and PR team the option to file a new amended complaint. However, after some huffing and puffing, they declined to submit a new-ish complaint.<\/p>\n

The District Court \u201cheld that any statements in the article and video reporting on the alleged sexual misconduct experienced by Lively were not actionable because they were based on the CRD complaint and therefore were subject to New York\u2019s fair report privilege and separately \u2018were not plausibly made with actual malice,’\u201d the Times\u2019 filing Tuesday says. \u201cAs for Times\u2019s statements about the smear campaign, the District Court found, to the extent they fell outside the privilege because they relied upon communications not included in the CRD Complaint, they were not plausibly made with actual malice.\u201d<\/p>\n

With depositions and discovery now occurring, and on-again, off-again cameos from the likes of Taylor Swift and more, Lively\u2019s action against the formerly WME-repped Baldoni <\/a>and the Wayfarer gang is set to go to trial beginning on March 9, 2026.<\/p>\n

\"(L-R)<\/p>\n

(L-R) Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the Times today made it clear this was about defending its journalists perhaps even more than its costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0New\u00a0York\u00a0Times\u00a0filed a suit against Justin Baldoni\u2019s production company, Wayfarer Studios, to obtain reimbursement of The\u00a0Times\u2019s legal fees from their baseless libel suit, which has now been dismissed by a federal judge,\u201d the company\u2019s Communications SVP Danielle Rhoades Ha told Deadline. \u201cNew\u00a0York\u00a0law allows publishers to recover their fees when they are targeted by suits designed to silence them. That is precisely what happened here. Our journalists covered carefully and fairly a story of public importance,\u00a0and Wayfarer and Baldoni should pay for having tried to misuse the courts and mislead the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other side of the table, Baldoni and Wayfarer\u2019s lead lawyer Bryan Freedman postulated that perhaps what constitutes justice in this particular matter needs to be reexamined.<\/p>\n

\u201cWin, lose, or draw, we refuse to cave to power brokers even in the face of seemingly impossible odds,\u201d Freedman said today. \u201cWe continue to stand tall for a reason: the pursuit of truth, in the face of giants. Our unwillingness to compromise our values, no matter the odds or the outcome, reflects a simple conviction that standing up for the truth and what is right matters.\u00a0If the current laws protect legacy media in this manner, perhaps it\u2019s up to us to ignite that change.\u201d<\/p>\n

To paraphrase the Times, all the lawsuits that are fit to be filed.<\/p>\n

Best of Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than three months after Justin Baldoni\u2019s $400 million defamation suit against Blake Lively, the New York Times,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[14497,4080,70942,77,16279,37999,2312,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-472185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-blake-lively","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-district-court","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-justin-baldoni","13":"tag-new-years-eve","14":"tag-ryan-reynolds","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115312660750891721","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}