Blake Lively Awarded About $400,000 in Legal Fees From Justin Baldoni Dispute
Blake Lively will receive just over $400,000 of the roughly $8 million in legal costs she sought from Justin Baldoni, a federal judge ruled Monday in a written decision out of Manhattan.
U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman awarded Lively $363,245 in attorneys' fees and $44,206 in costs, according to ABC News. The total comes to about $407,000 — a fraction of the approximately $7.5 million in legal fees and $540,000 in costs Lively had requested, which, per Reuters, included items such as legal research, travel, and meals.
The dispute traces back to the 2024 film It Ends With Us, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover's 2016 bestselling novel. Lively starred in the film; Baldoni directed and co-starred. Lively filed her federal lawsuit against Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios LLC, in December 2024. Wayfarer later filed a separate countersuit against Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds.
In June 2025, Judge Liman dismissed the Wayfarer countersuit. Around the same time, he ruled that Lively was entitled to some attorneys' fees but denied her request for damages, as reported by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal. This week's decision sets the dollar amount.
The reason Lively got far less than she asked for comes down to the scope of a California law designed to protect people from retaliatory lawsuits — cases filed in response to someone speaking up about sexual harassment or discrimination. Judge Liman ruled that the law only allowed Lively to be reimbursed for the lawyers' fees she paid to defend against Baldoni's defamation claims against her, not against every claim Baldoni had raised, according to ABC News.
Liman also rejected Lively's sexual harassment claims, ruling that she had worked on the film as an independent contractor rather than an employee — a distinction that narrowed what the California protective law covered in her case.
The case is formally docketed as Lively v. Wayfarer Studios LLC in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Baldoni was served in January 2025. Wayfarer's separate suit against Lively was filed shortly after.
For now, the fee ruling closes one chapter of a dispute that has drawn attention since the film's release in August 2024. The core lawsuit between Lively and Baldoni remains the larger proceeding, and the dollar figure approved this week — about 5% of what Lively sought — reflects the judge's narrower reading of which legal costs the California law was designed to cover.
