A federal judge in New York has now shut the door on Justin Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit against Blake Lively, with a final judgment entered after Baldoni missed an October 17 deadline to amend his claims—cementing a June ruling that had already thrown out the bulk of his case. The order, entered at the end of October and noted in court reporting over the weekend, leaves intact U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman’s June 9 decision dismissing Baldoni’s defamation and extortion claims against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and others, and separately dismissing a related $250 million suit Baldoni brought against the New York Times. In the June ruling, the judge held that Lively’s statements to a state civil rights agency were privileged and therefore could not ground a defamation claim, that the pleadings did not plausibly show a conspiracy among Lively, Reynolds, or Lively’s publicist to disseminate knowingly false statements, and that the Times’ reporting was protected under New York’s fair-report doctrine and First Amendment principles. “Today’s opinion is a total victory and a complete vindication for Blake Lively,” Lively’s lawyers, Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson, said in a contemporaneous statement, calling the $400 million filing “a sham.” A Times spokesperson said, “Our journalists went out and covered carefully and fairly a story of public importance, and the court recognized that the law is designed to protect just that sort of journalism.”
The final judgment was entered after the plaintiffs—Baldoni and entities affiliated with his Wayfarer Studios—did not respond to Liman’s October 17 order to show cause as to why judgment should not be entered, following their failure to meet the court’s prior deadline to amend the claims that had been dismissed with leave to replead in a narrower form. Entertainment trade coverage of the docket indicates Baldoni retains an appellate path only after the court resolves pending fee and cost applications, but the core defamation and extortion theories that anchored the $400 million claim are no longer before the court. The development marks the latest turn in litigation that began publicly in December 2024, when Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department alleging sexual harassment and retaliation linked to the production of the 2024 feature “It Ends With Us,” which Baldoni directed and co-starred in. That administrative complaint was followed by Lively’s civil lawsuit; Baldoni denied wrongdoing and responded with sweeping claims that Lively, Reynolds and others had orchestrated a smear campaign and unlawfully wrested creative control. Judge Liman’s June 9 opinion rejected those allegations under federal pleading standards, holding that the facts alleged did not support a plausible inference of a coordinated conspiracy to defame, and emphasizing that statements made in the course of filing with a government agency enjoy privilege. The judge also dismissed Baldoni’s separate $250 million complaint against the New York Times that attacked the paper’s December 2024 investigative article; the Times said the ruling affirmed the legal protections that “legitimate journalism” receives.
The post-judgment phase now turns on money: whether Baldoni will be ordered to pay substantial legal fees and potentially other damages as a consequence of pressing claims that the court found legally deficient. After the June dismissal, multiple defendants moved for attorneys’ fees and related relief. Publicly filed materials show that Lively sought attorneys’ fees and damages and that Reynolds and Lively’s publicist moved for fees under New York’s anti-SLAPP law—an expanded statute that provides fee-shifting when a plaintiff brings meritless claims targeting speech or petitioning on matters of public interest. In New York, Civil Rights Law § 70-a authorizes recovery of costs and fees for prevailing defendants under defined circumstances, and legal advisories describe fee awards as mandatory when the action lacks a substantial basis in law and fact. Judge Liman denied fee motions “without prejudice” at the time of the June merits decision, leaving room to renew after procedural posture clarified—opening the door to the current round of applications following final judgment. If the anti-SLAPP framework is ruled applicable here, fee-shifting could be significant.
Separate from Lively’s potential fee recovery, the New York Times has already taken an aggressive tack: in October, the publisher filed its own action seeking to recoup attorneys’ fees and costs from Baldoni’s camp, arguing that his defamation case against the paper “lacked any basis in fact or law” and squarely triggers New York’s anti-SLAPP protections. Deadline’s report on that filing framed it as the Times moving proactively to claw back expenses after prevailing on dismissal; the Times’ fee petition underscores how exposure here may extend beyond Lively’s side to third-party media defendants drawn into the defamation claims.