A New York judge has dismissed Justin Baldoni’s $400m (£295m) defamation lawsuit against his former co-star Blake Lively.
Judge Lewis Liman on Monday dismissed Baldoni’s countersuit, which alleged extortion, defamation and other allegations.
Lively also shared details of the allegations in a New York Times article published before her lawsuit.
The judge also determined that evidence did not show that the New York Times “acted with actual malice” in publishing their story.
Judge Liman said Baldoni would be allowed to amend and refile his allegations related to interference with contracts by 23 June.
The $400 million (£295 million) defamation suit that Justin Baldoni filed against his former co-star Blake Lively was dismissed by a judge in New York.
A trial is scheduled for next year, and the two, who costarred in the 2024 movie It Ends with Us, have been embroiled in a legal battle for several months.
Baldoni filed a countersuit, alleging extortion, defamation, and other charges, but Judge Lewis Liman dismissed it on Monday.
After Lively accused her former co-star of sexual harassment and launched a smear campaign against him in a lawsuit she filed last year, Baldoni filed the lawsuit.
Among other things, Lively sued Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios in December 2024, claiming she was sexually harassed on set and that Baldoni retaliated against her for filing the complaints.
In an article in the New York Times prior to her lawsuit, Lively also provided specifics of the accusations.
Then, claiming that Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, their publicist, and the New York Times were trying to destroy his reputation and career with the accusations, Baldoni filed a defamation lawsuit against them.
Judge Liman explained in his opinion that Lively and others spread a false narrative that Baldoni sexually assaulted her and started a smear campaign against her, and that Lively “stole the film” from Baldoni and his company Wayfarer by threatening not to promote it.
However, he wrote that Baldoni and his production company “have not adequately alleged that Lively’s threats were wrongful extortion rather than legally permissible hard bargaining or renegotiation of working conditions.”.
Furthermore, because the “Wayfarer Parties have not alleged that Lively is responsible for any statements other than the statements” in her lawsuit, which are privileged, the judge wrote, Baldoni and his company had not proven defamation.
Additionally, the judge found no evidence that the New York Times “acted with actual malice” when they published their story.
“The alleged facts indicate that the Times reviewed the available evidence and reported, perhaps in a dramatized manner, what it believed to have happened,” he wrote. “There was no clear reason why the Times would support Lively’s account of what happened. “.”.
“A complete victory and a complete vindication for Blake Lively, along with those that Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer Parties dragged into their retaliatory lawsuit, including Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Sloane, and The New York Times,” Lively’s attorneys said in a statement released to US media.
Her attorneys stated, “This ‘$400 million’ lawsuit was a sham, and the Court saw right through it, as we have said from day one.”.
The BBC has reached out to Baldoni’s attorneys for a response.
According to Judge Liman, Baldoni has until June 23 to revise and refile his claims of contract interference.
A week after Lively requested to drop two of the allegations in her lawsuit against Baldoni—intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress—Judge Liman dismissed the case.
She said she suffered “severe emotional distress” as a result of the alleged sexual harassment and smear campaign in the initial lawsuit.
In Blake Lively’s adaptation of the best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, It Ends With Us, the protagonist is Lily Bloom, a young woman who witnessed domestic abuse as a child and finds herself in a similar situation years later.
