Blake Lively v. Baldoni: Settlement, Fees, Taylor Swift’s Role

Blake Lively’s lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, filed December 31, 2024, in the Southern District of New York, accused her It Ends With Us co-star and director of sexual harassment, retaliation, and orchestrating a coordinated smear campaign against her through his production company and publicists.¹ After more than a year of discovery fights, a dismissed $400 million countersuit from Baldoni, and the pruning of most of Lively’s own claims, the two sides settled on May 7, 2026, roughly two weeks before trial. Lively received no monetary payout in the settlement itself, but a June 2026 ruling ordered Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios to cover her attorney fees for defending against his dismissed defamation claims.²

What Lively Alleged

Lively’s federal complaint set out thirteen causes of action, including sexual harassment under federal and California law, retaliation, breach of contract, false light, defamation, and civil conspiracy.³ She named Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath, investor Steve Sarowitz, crisis consultant Melissa Nathan, publicist Jennifer Abel, and The Agency Group PR LLC as defendants.¹

On the set of It Ends With Us, Lively alleged, Baldoni and Heath discussed pornography addiction in her presence, made comments about her body, and improvised physical intimacy that had not been rehearsed or approved in advance.⁴ After the 2023 actors’ strike paused production, her legal team presented seventeen “Protections for Return to Production” in November 2023, including intimacy coordinator requirements and restrictions on unscripted physical contact, before she would return to set.³

The second half of her case concerned what happened after she raised those concerns. Lively said Baldoni and his associates hired crisis managers and digital strategists to run a “social manipulation” campaign designed to damage her publicly. Internal messages entered into evidence included lines such as “He wants to feel like she can be buried” and “I think we need to put the social combat plan into motion.”⁵ Baldoni himself had written in May 2023 that Lively “had the nuclear bomb” and that if she refused to promote the film, “she can leak that I’m a bad person or that she felt unsafe with me.”⁶

Lively estimated her total damages at more than $161 million, covering lost acting income, harm to her beauty brand Blake Brown and her beverage company Betty B Holdings, and reputational damage tied to what she alleged were 65 million impressions of defamatory statements.⁷ She had filed a parallel administrative complaint with the California Civil Rights Department on December 20, 2024.⁸

Baldoni’s Countersuit and Why It Was Thrown Out

Baldoni counterattacked on two fronts. On December 31, 2024, he sued The New York Times for libel over its reporting on Lively’s allegations, initially seeking $250 million.⁹ On January 16, 2025, he filed a $400 million countersuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, alleging defamation, civil extortion, and invasion of privacy, and accusing them of orchestrating a campaign to destroy his career.¹

Judge Lewis J. Liman dismissed the defamation claims in a 132-page opinion. He classified Baldoni as a public figure, meaning Baldoni had to show “actual malice,” and found his arguments “circumstantial and lacked adequate foundation” to meet that bar.¹⁰ The judge applied the litigation privilege to Lively’s own statements, holding they were “legally protected and therefore immune from suit.” The Times‘s reporting fell under the “fair report privilege” for coverage of judicial proceedings, and Reynolds’s characterization of Baldoni as a “sexual predator” was tied to Lively’s account, which Reynolds had no reason to doubt.¹¹

Which of Lively’s Claims Survived to Trial

Lively’s own case shrank sharply. In April 2026, Judge Liman dismissed ten of her thirteen claims on motions for judgment on the pleadings and summary judgment.³

The federal sexual harassment claims failed because the court found Lively was an independent contractor, not an employee, and therefore could not sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Examining specific allegations of improvised on-set conduct, Judge Liman concluded it was “not so far beyond what might reasonably be expected” during the scenes at issue, writing that “creative artists, no less than comedy room writers, must have some amount of space to experiment within the bounds of an agreed script without fear of being held liable for sexual harassment.”¹² Other claims were dismissed because the alleged misconduct occurred in New Jersey and lacked a sufficient connection to California law.¹³

Three claims were set for trial:

Retaliation under California law against It Ends With Us Movie LLC and Wayfarer Studios.
Aiding and abetting retaliation under California law against The Agency Group PR LLC.
Breach of the Contract Rider Agreement against It Ends With Us Movie LLC, the January 2024 agreement addressing Lively’s safety conditions for returning to production.³

The May 2026 Settlement

On May 7, 2026, roughly two weeks before the federal trial was to begin, Lively and Baldoni settled.¹⁴ The agreement included no monetary payout to Lively.¹⁵ Baldoni acknowledged that Lively’s claims “deserved to be heard,” and the parties issued a joint statement saying they remained “firmly committed to workplaces free of improprieties and unproductive environments” and hoped the resolution would allow everyone “to move forward constructively and in peace.”¹⁶

The Attorney Fee Ruling

On June 12, 2026, Judge Liman ruled that Wayfarer Studios must pay Lively’s attorney fees for defending against Baldoni’s dismissed defamation countersuit. The award came under California Civil Code Section 47.1, enacted in October 2023 to protect people who report sexual misconduct from retaliatory defamation suits.² To qualify, the accuser must have made her complaints “without malice,” a standard Judge Liman found Lively met.¹⁷ The specific dollar amount was not set in the ruling. The judge denied Lively’s separate request for compensatory, treble, and punitive damages, holding those remedies were unavailable under federal law in this context.¹⁴

How Taylor Swift Got Pulled In

Swift, a close friend of Lively’s, is repeatedly cited in coverage of the case but never became a party to it. Her involvement centered on discovery.

In May 2025, Baldoni’s legal team subpoenaed Swift and her law firm, Venable LLP, for communications tied to the film and the dispute. Swift’s spokesperson called the subpoena “tabloid clickbait,” saying Swift “never set foot on the set of this movie” and that her only connection to the film was licensing the song “My Tears Ricochet” for the soundtrack.¹⁸ Venable moved to quash on May 12, 2025, calling the request a “fishing expedition.”¹⁹ Baldoni’s team later withdrew the subpoena after obtaining information through negotiations, mooting the motion.²⁰ In June 2025, Judge Liman ruled that Baldoni could obtain messages between Lively and Swift that pertained to the film and the legal conflict, subject to a protective order to prevent public leaks.²¹

Also in May 2025, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman filed an affidavit alleging that Lively’s lawyer had pressured Swift to publicly support Lively by threatening to release “10 years” of private text messages if she refused.²² Lively’s attorney Michael Gottlieb called the claim “categorically false” and “completely untethered from reality.”²³ Judge Liman granted a motion to strike the letter and affidavit, finding the filing “improper” and “irrelevant” and writing that its “sole purpose” was to “promote public scandal” through “inflammatory accusations” that “transparently invites a press uproar.” He warned that further misuse of the docket could bring sanctions.²⁴

Some of the Lively-Swift messages later surfaced in court filings in January 2026, including Swift calling Baldoni a “bitch” who had “gotten out his tiny violin” over a People magazine piece, and an April 2023 exchange in which Lively asked Swift to attend a meeting to validate a script rewrite, referring to Baldoni as “this doofus director of my movie” and a “clown,” to which Swift replied, “I’ll do anything for you !!”²⁵²⁶

Related Cases Still Open

The settlement between Lively and Baldoni did not end every dispute in the orbit of the case. In December 2024, PR executive Stephanie Jones and her firm Jonesworks sued Baldoni, Abel, and Nathan for defamation and breach of contract, alleging the defendants ran a “media smear campaign” behind her back while taking proprietary documents and clients. Assigned to Judge Liman, that case remained active as of mid-2026.²⁷²⁸

Separately, Texas-based crisis consultant Jed Wallace, whom Lively had accused of running a “digital army” against her, sued Lively for $7 million in defamation in Texas federal court in February 2025. Judge Liman dismissed Lively’s claims against Wallace from her own case for lack of personal jurisdiction in New York, noting that the state’s long-arm statute excludes defamation claims, and observed she could potentially refile in Texas.²⁹³⁰

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