By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, May 7 (Reuters) – Blake Lively, who recently settled her lawsuit against Justin Baldoni’s production company, is still seeking damages from the actor and director tied to their 2024 movie “It Ends With Us,” Lively’s lawyers said on Thursday.
According to a filing in Manhattan federal court, Lively wants Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios to cover her legal fees and pay damages for filing a “retaliatory” defamation lawsuit, which the judge overseeing their legal disputes dismissed last June.
“As the ‘prevailing defendant,’ Ms. Lively is entitled not just to attorneys’ fees and costs, but also to compensatory damages tripled, and punitive damages,” the letter said.
The request prolongs often acrimonious litigation that began in December 2024, when Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment during the filming of “It Ends With Us,” whose themes included domestic violence.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman dismissed Lively’s harassment claims and all claims against Baldoni on April 2, but said she could sue for retaliation. Both sides said on Monday they settled the remaining claims.
“By agreeing to this settlement, and waiving their right to appeal, Justin Baldoni and every individual defendant now face personal liability for abusing the legal system to silence and intimidate Ms. Lively,” her lawyers Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson said in a joint statement on Thursday.
Bryan Freedman, a lawyer for Baldoni, said in a separate statement that Lively settled because she knew she would lose. “All that remains is a pending request for fees based on a very narrow issue that has been with the court since September,” he said.
Lawyers for Lively called Monday’s settlement a “resounding victory” for her, while Freedman called it a “total victory” for Baldoni.
Lively is seeking fees and damages under a 2023 California law designed to protect sexual harassment accusers from retaliatory defamation lawsuits by their alleged perpetrators.
Baldoni’s $400 million lawsuit accused Lively, her husband and fellow actor Ryan Reynolds, and others of trying to smear him and wrest control of the movie.
Liman concluded that Baldoni did not show Lively defamed him, and that any alleged defamatory claims about Baldoni that Lively made to a California civil rights agency were privileged.
“It Ends With Us” starred Lively as a flower shop owner who marries a neurosurgeon played by Baldoni. The movie grossed more than $351 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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