Blake Lively Joins Ryan Reynolds, NYT In Wanting Justin Baldoni’s $400M Suit Kicked To The Curb, With A California Twist
With a strong recommendation that Justin Baldoni and his team catch up on California law, Blake Lively wants the latest version of her It Ends With Us co-star’s $400 million defamation and extortion against her, Ryan Reynolds, the New York Times, publicist Leslie Sloane and Vision PR tossed to the legal curb.
“The Court should dismiss all claims against Ms. Lively with prejudice, deny leave to amend, and award Ms. Lively all relief sought,” declares a memorandum of law just filed in federal court in NYC along with Lively’s motion to dismiss. Centering on a Golden State measure from 2023 that aims to safeguard accusers, and seemingly undercut Baldoni, Lively’s lawyers assert “the law prohibits weaponizing defamation lawsuits, like this one, to retaliate against individuals who have filed legal claims or have publicly spoken out about sexual harassment and retaliation.”
More from Deadline
Having all started with the sexual harassment and retaliation compliant Lively filed with the California Civil Rights department on December 20, today’s paperwork comes two days after the Gossip Girl vet’s Deadpool husband put his own motion to see Balconi’s action ended.
“Nothing in the FAC resembles an actionable legal claim,” the 44-page memo from Lively’s the Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips lawyers says of the January 31 amended complaint from Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios and executives, plus PR team Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel.
With a settlement still looking very unlikely in the bitter battle between Team Blake and Team Baldoni, everyone is trying to get one of the lawsuits against them dismissed at this point. However, as several other lawsuits having emerged from the matter of what actually occurred during the making of IEWU and the subsequent alleged “astroturfing” campaign against the actress, the whole thing is right now still schedule to go to trial on March 9, 2026.
Unless, Lively, Reynolds or someone else actually does get this matter that has captivated the industry and the world shuttered.
“It is …a blunt public relations instrument designed to further the Wayfarer Parties’ sinister campaign to ‘bury’ and ‘destroy’ Ms. Lively for speaking out about sexual harassment and retaliation,” Lively’s Mike Gottlieb- and Esra Hudson-led attorneys argue of Baldoni’s suit in their filing Thursday.. “The Court should dismiss the FAC and—as required by California law—hold further proceedings to calculate an appropriate award of Ms. Lively’s attorneys’ fees, treble damages for the harm this meritless lawsuit has inflicted on her, and punitive damages against each of the Wayfarer Parties.”
Taking a calculated strike at the heart of one of the main West Coast arguments, the Jane the Virgin’s alum’s Bryan Freedman-led legal team have been advocating for months, Lively’s motion to dismiss is also saying show me the money!
Specifically, Lively’s team are today spotlight Assembly Bill 933, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom on October 10, 2023. The pivotal addition to the the state Civil Code reads:
Existing law provides that libel is a false and unprivileged written publication that injures the reputation and that slander is a false and unprivileged publication, orally uttered, that injures the reputation, as specified. Existing law makes certain publications and communications privileged and therefore protected from civil action, including complaints of sexual harassment by an employee, without malice, to an employer based on credible evidence and communications between the employer and interested persons regarding a complaint of sexual harassment.
This bill would include among those privileged communications a communication made by an individual, without malice, regarding an incident of sexual assault, harassment, or discrimination, as defined, and would specify the attorney’s fees and damages available to a prevailing defendant in any defamation action brought against that defendant for making that communication.
Picking up on that, Lively’s filing today put Baldoni’s FAC and his lawyers constant insistence this should all be addressed under the laws of the Golden State in a potential leg hold trap context:
The Wayfarer Parties’ vengeful and rambling lawsuit against Blake Lively is a profound abuse of the legal process that has no place in federal court. The law prohibits weaponizing defamation lawsuits, like this one, to retaliate against individuals who have filed legal claims or have publicly spoken out about sexual harassment and retaliation. The right to seek legal redress and the right of the press to report on it are sacred principles that are protected by multiple privileges, including the litigation and fair report privileges, which are absolute. Moreover, by choosing to bring their claims under California law, the Wayfarer Parties have voluntarily subjected their entire lawsuit to the sexual harassment privilege in the recently enacted California Civil Code Section 47.1 (“Section 47.1”), which bars retaliatory lawsuits based on public disclosures of sexual harassment and related allegations, including disclosures to the press. Given all of these protections, the Wayfarer Parties’ chief complaint that Ms. Lively and others supposedly “conspired” with The New York Times is barred as a matter of law – she was legally entitled to file her complaint and disclose it to the public.
Representatives for Baldoni did not respond to request for comment on Lively’d motion. Lively’s lawyer certainly had something to get off their chest, with a bit of repetition from their filing today.
“This lawsuit is a profound abuse of the legal process that has no place in federal court,” Gottlieb and Hudson told Deadline this morning.
“California law now expressly prohibits suing victims who make the decision to speak out against sexual harassment or retaliation, whether in a lawsuit or in the press,” the attorneys continued. “This meritless and retaliatory lawsuit runs head first into three legal obstacles, including the litigation, fair report, and sexual harassment privileges, the latter of which contains a mandatory fee shifting provision that will require the likes of billionaire Steve Sarowitz, Wayfarer Studios, and others that brought frivolous defamation claims against Ms. Lively to pay damages. In other words, in an epic self-own, the Wayfarer Parties’ attempt to sue Ms. Lively “into oblivion” has only created more liability for them, and deservedly so, given what they have done.”
To put this all on the sometimes weaving timeline of Lively vs. Baldoni, Reynolds, the NYT and PR chief Leslie Sloane have all put documents in Judge Lewis J. Liman’s docket to have themselves removed from the case. In the case of the Gray Lady, after the December 21-posted NYT exposé ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,’ Baldoni and his inner circle sued the paper for libel, fraud and more on New Year’s Eve for $250 million in California state court — the same day Lively officially sued Baldoni in federal court.
Posting a timeline of their own online (which Team Blake slammed as a cherry picking, as Team Baldoni said of Livley’s CRD complaint late last year), Baldoni and his gang unleashed the expanded amended complaint at the core of today’s dismissal action by Livley at the end of January. On February 18, Lively filed her own amended complaint against Baldoni — adding so-called “hired gun” Jed Wallace, who allegedly worked with Baldoni’s publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel to orchestrate what the NYT called a preemptive smear campaign against the actress in the lead-up to IEWU’s release to blunt any potential allegations of misconduct against their client.
On the other side, as various protective orders have been on the table in the main case, Wallace earlier this year launched a $7 million suit of his own against Lively protesting (despite some harsh text messages that seem to indicate otherwise) that he had nothing to do with any smear campaign and has seen his Texas-based business suffer because of such claims. Add to that, Stephanie Jones of PR firm Jonesworks is also suing her ex-staffer Adel, Baldoni and others for ending the actor’s contract with the company last summer as Abel opened her own RWA Communications.
No hearings have been put on the court calendar yet for the various dismissal requests, but with Lively now also seeking to have Baldoni’s case push out, the docket is sure to see some movement soon.
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
