Blake Lively Gets a Fraction of the Legal Fees She Sought

Blake Lively will get just over $400,000 of the $8 million she sought in legal costs from actor and director Justin Baldoni after they settled their fight over the production of their 2024 film It Ends With Us, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Judge Lewis J. Liman explained in a written decision in Manhattan why Lively was not entitled to the full amount that her lawyers claim was spent after Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios LLC, filed their own claims in response to her December 2024 lawsuit, which alleged that she had been subjected to sexual harassment, among other things. The AP reports Liman cited the limits of a California law designed to protect survivors of sexual harassment and discrimination from retaliatory lawsuits.

Liman wrote that under it, she could only be reimbursed for what she paid lawyers to defend against defamation claims, rather than all the claims Baldoni made against her—civil extortion, invasion of privacy, and breach of good faith among them. Thus, the judge ruled, Lively is entitled to $363,245 in attorneys' fees and $44,206 in costs. In June 2025, Liman tossed out the countersuit Baldoni and Wayfarer had filed, and in April 2026 rejected Lively's sexual harassment claims on the grounds that she was an independent contractor rather than an employee when she worked on the film. The two settled the rest of her case in early May, with Lively's lawyers moving to collect legal fees days later.