Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s lawyers have faced off in $400 million lawsuit earlier this week.
In December 2024, Blake filed an 80-page legal complaint against her It Ends with Us co-star for sexual harassment, claiming he caused her “severe emotional distress.”
The 37-year-old also alleged that out of fear of the allegations coming out, Justin engaged in a “social manipulation” campaign to “destroy” her reputation.
Justin has strenuously denied her claims and has sued The New York Times for their bombshell article detailing Blake’s allegation.
The actor has claimed that the newspaper published an article “rife with inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and omissions” that relied on Blake’s “self-serving narrative.”
On January 16th, Justin’s legal team subsequently filed a $400 million complaint on behalf of him, producer Jamey Heath, publicist Jennifer Abel, and crisis publicist Melissa Nathan, alleging that Blake took action to take control of the popular film.
On 1st February, Baldoni filed an amended version of this lawsuit which added new allegations towards the publication.
Now, US media has reported that in court, Judge Lewis Liman said the latest amended lawsuit broke court procedure.
The judge threatened to bring forward the date of the trial if the two continue to discuss the dispute in the media.
The trial date is currently set fro March 2026.
The judge stated: “You’ve got a lot in front of the court that gives, I think, the public plenty to feast upon.”
Earlier this month, Justin filed an amended version of his lawsuit which added new allegations towards The New York Times..
The actor’s legal team alleged that an analysis of the article’s HTML source code revealed a “message-embed-generator” with a date of “2024-10-31.”
However, the article itself was not published until December 2024.
The filing accused Blake of giving the publication access to her sexual harassment complaint early.
Now, The New York Times issued a statement denying these claims.
In a statement to JustJared, a spokesperson told the publication: “The Baldoni/Wayfarer legal filings are rife with inaccuracies about The New York Times, including, for example, the bogus claim that The Times had early access to Ms. Lively’s state civil rights complaint.”
“Mr. Baldoni’s lawyers base their erroneous claim on postings by amateur internet sleuths, who, not surprisingly, are wrong.”
“The problem: that date is generated by Google software and is unrelated to the date when The Times received it and posted it. A look at the metadata from the posted document correctly shows it was posted after Ms. Lively filed it with the California Civil Rights Department.”
