Justin Baldoni lost his $400 million lawsuit against Blake Lively after missing a court filing deadline.
Baldoni's high-profile $400 million defamation and extortion lawsuit against Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and The New York Times was officially dismissed after Baldoni failed to meet a court-ordered deadline to amend his complaint.
In a ruling published on October 31, Judge Lewis Liman of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York determined that Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, failed to respond to an order directing them to explain why a final judgment should not be entered. As a result, the lawsuit was permanently closed.
The affair, which began as a sharp conflict between actors who became rivals, expanded into a stormy legal dispute that ignited Hollywood and led to a deep rift in Lively's close relationships, including the one with Taylor Swift, who was a close friend of Lively until the crisis erupted. According to reports, Swift's name was linked to the proceedings when she was asked to testify, but in practice, she avoids being directly involved and maintains distance from everything related to the legal drama – a choice that, sources claim, ended the longtime friendship between the two.
The new ruling marks the end of an affair that was already on the verge of collapse on Baldoni's side since June, when Judge Liman dismissed Baldoni's original complaint. At that time, the court determined that Baldoni's defamation claims lacked a legal foundation, as many of the statements he relied upon – including excerpts from the sexual harassment complaint Lively filed and the article published in The New York Times – were protected under the doctrine of reporting immunity and legal privilege.
While the latest ruling essentially nullifies Baldoni's lawsuit for defamation and extortion, it is likely not yet the final outcome of the story. He retains the right to appeal after the court rules on Lively's motion for reimbursement of legal expenses. However, this represents a significant defeat for the director and actor, who had called their lawsuit a "counterattack" as part of a legal battle that became one of the most turbulent, publicized, and messy in Hollywood.
Baldoni filed the lawsuit in January 2025, shortly after Lively filed a lawsuit against him for sexual harassment on the set of the film "It Ends With Us," which he directed and in which he also starred in the lead role alongside her. In her lawsuit, filed in December 2024, Lively claimed that Baldoni behaved in a harassing manner during filming, including an incident in which he "leaned forward and moved his lips from her ear to her neck slowly," and told her, "It smells so good." She added that he pressured her to include a graphic sex scene and made intrusive comments about her private life with her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds.
After Lively's lawsuit became public, Baldoni accused Lively, Reynolds, and The New York Times of attempting to destroy his reputation through a coordinated smear campaign, relying on an article published in the newspaper in December 2024 under the headline "We Can Bury Anyone: Inside Hollywood's Spin Machine," which described the filing of Lively's complaint to California's Civil Rights Department and discussed in detail the tensions surrounding the film's production.
The ruling issued this week closes, at least for now, Baldoni's offensive side, but leaves Lively's lawsuit open, which may reveal more details about what happened behind the scenes of the controversial film.
