Justin Baldoni's Lawyer Scalps Blake Lively After Final Court Ruling: 'She Exploited Real Victims and Failed'

Justin Baldoni's lawyer has gone on the offensive after a New York federal judge ruled on 12 June that Blake Lively can seek to recover some of her legal fees in their bitter It Ends With Us dispute, attacking the actor for what he claims was a failed attempt to 'exploit' laws protecting sexual assault victims.

The fee ruling is the latest twist in a case that has been dragging behind the 2024 film for months. Lively sued Baldoni, his company Wayfarer Studios and others in December 2024, accusing them of sexual harassment, retaliation and orchestrating a smear campaign during the production and promotion of It Ends With Us. Baldoni responded with a defamation countersuit, which the court later threw out. The parties eventually reached a settlement in May, but that did not resolve who would shoulder the costs of defending Baldoni's dismissed case.

Judge's Mixed Ruling in Justin Baldoni Case

The most recent order, issued by U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman in the Southern District of New York, granted Lively a narrow but symbolically loaded win. The judge said she could pursue attorneys' fees and litigation costs under California Civil Code Section 47.1, a statute designed to protect people from retaliatory defamation claims when they speak about alleged sexual misconduct.

The judge stopped well short of giving Lively everything she wanted. He rejected her push for treble damages and punitive damages, containing the ruling to the question of whether she could try to reclaim the money she spent fighting Baldoni's countersuit. The decision did not reopen the substance of her harassment and retaliation allegations, which had already been heavily pared back in an earlier ruling.

In April, Judge Liman dismissed 10 of Lively's 13 claims, a significant legal setback for her, but he did not find that Baldoni had proved she acted with 'malice' when she made her allegations. That single word has become a pressure point. It is central to the California statute at issue and is now being spun in sharply different ways by the two camps.

Lively's lawyers, Esra Hudson and Michael Gottlieb, argued that the fee order reflects the court's view that she raised her accusations in good faith. They said she had 'proved to the court that there was no evidence she acted with malice,' and stressed that while she lost her bid for enhanced financial penalties this round, she retained the right to seek damages under other legal mechanisms. Their framing is clear enough: she may not have won the case she wanted, but she did not, in their view, lie.

Baldoni's Lawyer Tries to Shrink Blake Lively's Win

Baldoni's lawyer Bryan Freedman, one of Hollywood's go-to litigators, responded to the judge's order with a statement that read more like a closing argument for the court of public opinion than a routine reaction to a mixed ruling.

'We fought and won against a coordinated effort built on allegations of sexual harassment, retaliation and a smear campaign that never happened,' he said, insisting that Lively's overarching case had failed. According to Freedman, Lively had demanded 'over $300 million in fees and damages' before agreeing to a settlement that left her with 'nothing.'

He then turned to the California statute that underpinned the judge's latest ruling. Freedman accused Lively of hijacking a law designed to protect 'real victims' of sexual misconduct, portraying her attempt to secure damages under Section 47.1 as an overreach that the court ultimately curbed. In his telling, she 'exploited' the statute and walked away with approval to seek only 'limited attorney fees for one claim in a case that lasted only months.'

The numbers and the spin both matter here. The judge has not yet set any figure for what Baldoni and the other defendants might owe in fees. That will be a separate fight, and there is no guarantee Lively will recover anything like the sums she originally pursued. Nothing is confirmed on quantum, and the eventual award, if there is one, could be modest.

What is clear is that both sides are treating this sliver of a ruling as ammunition in a larger reputational battle. Lively's camp is leaning on the absence of a malice finding to say her accusations were not fabricated. Baldoni's team is pointing to the dismissal of most of her claims, the settlement, and the trimmed-back fee ruling to argue that she overreached and lost.

The judge's order also notes that both parties have already agreed to waive their right to appeal the earlier dismissal ruling. That move shuts down one obvious route for dragging the case back through the appellate courts and signals a shared appetite, at least on paper, to avoid relitigating the core claims.

Yet it does not end the matter. The fee dispute remains live, and the reputational fallout from months of allegations, counter-allegations and legal posturing is harder to quantify than any bill submitted to the court. For Baldoni, the practical consequences now depend less on obscure statutory language and more on how persuasively his side can paint this latest turn as a hollow victory for Blake Lively rather than a meaningful vindication of her right to speak.