{"id":945066,"date":"2026-05-08T02:03:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T02:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/945066\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T02:03:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T02:03:17","slug":"blake-lively-looks-for-an-edge-in-it-ends-with-us-settlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/945066\/","title":{"rendered":"Blake Lively Looks for an Edge in ‘It Ends With Us’ Settlement"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNew details are emerging of the 11th-hour deal between Blake Lively<\/a> and Justin Baldoni<\/a> to avert a headline-splashing trial over alleged sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBaldoni indicated in a joint filing on Thursday that he waived his right to appeal the court\u2019s order last year dismissing his $400 million lawsuit against Lively, opening the door for the actress to recover legal<\/a> fees and pursue damages under a California law intended to shield sexual harassment victims from retaliatory defamation claims.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf Lively\u2019s bid is granted, the court will schedule proceedings to assess the reputational fallout that flowed from Baldoni\u2019s lawsuit. The actress also seeks punitive damages, which are meant to punish the It Ends With Us director and his faction in the case for particularly egregious misconduct.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the settlement<\/a> was announced on Monday, both sides issued a tame joint statement saying that the movie was a \u201csource of pride to all of us\u201d and that Lively\u2019s concerns \u201cdeserved to be heard.\u201d At the time, neither group proclaimed they came out of the deal on top.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, Lively is jockeying for a legal and public relations edge. Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson, lawyers for Lively, in a statement called the settlement a \u201cresounding victory.\u201d They added, \u201cJustin Baldoni and every individual defendant now face personal liability for abusing the legal system to silence and intimidate Ms. Lively. And by admitting that Ms. Lively\u2019s concerns \u2018deserved to be heard,\u2019 the defendants have ended once and for all the fiction that Ms. Lively \u2018fabricated\u2019 claims of sexual harassment and retaliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThursday\u2019s filing adds to the uncertainty around the scope of potential liability by Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer, for initiating defamation battles against Lively and The New York Times. Also in play: a lawsuit<\/a> filed by one of Wayfarer\u2019s insurers for the film, Harco National Insurance, seeking a court order that it has no duty to pay legal fees. Baldoni later accused<\/a> a trio of other insurers of breach of contract for refusing to cover litigation costs. In total, their policies collectively carried at least $8 million in insurance.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the settlement, Lively already met one of the hurdles to recover damages from Baldoni after the court last year dismissed his defamation claims. And because he waived his right to appeal the ruling in the deal, the judgment is final.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder the California law Lively asserts, the actress could be entitled to attorneys\u2019 fees, plus treble and punitive damages, for harm caused by Baldoni\u2019s defamation claims. The law, which went into effect in 2024, is intended to shield sexual harassment and assault victims when they report misconduct as long as they had a reasonable basis for their claims.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the filing, Lively argues that Baldoni\u2019s lawsuit was meant to retaliate against her. He cites a statement from Wayfarer cofounder Steve Sarowitz in which he said that he was \u201cprepared to spend $100 million to ruin the lives of Ms. Lively and her family.\u201d The billionaire financier later said, \u201cI will protect the studio like Israel protected itself from Hamas. There were 39,000 dead bodies. There will be two dead bodies when I\u2019m done. Minimum,\u201d according to the court document.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actress also contends that she reported the incidents of alleged sexual harassment on the set of the film in good faith, saying that she repeatedly raised concerns to the production, negotiated contractual protections to address the issue and exposed herself to intense scrutiny by filing her lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Wayfarer Parties defamation action against Blake Lively was baseless from the start,\u201d Hudson writes in the court document. \u201cDespite repeated warnings about the impropriety of their legal claims, and the consequences of continuing to pursue them, the Wayfarer Parties refused to back down. Instead, they stoked the flames of public sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLively says she expects to seek a \u201cmultimillion dollar reward\u201d to recover her legal fees and is entitled to damages for harm caused by Wayfarer\u2019s allegedly frivolous lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth sides hired a sprawling team of lawyers for the litigation, with legal expenses likely in the tens of millions of dollars. Many of their firms charge north of $1,000 an hour, and there were nearly 1,500 docket entries in Lively\u2019s case alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New details are emerging of the 11th-hour deal between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni to avert a headline-splashing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3940],"tags":[14497,4080,77,52051,16279,7900,16,15],"class_list":["post-945066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-blake-lively","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-it-ends-with-us","tag-justin-baldoni","tag-legal","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116536502504541687","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945066","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=945066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}