The gloves are off. Blake Lively has fired back against the lawsuit by Justin Baldoni in a scorching new twist to their ongoing legal war, and this time she isn’t holding anything back.
Lively has accused Baldoni of running a “scorched earth” retaliation campaign to muzzle her sexual harassment claims. In a bombshell legal statement released Thursday, her attorneys slammed Baldoni’s $400 million defamation lawsuit as an attack calculated to dismantle California laws that protect survivors.
What was the root of the conflict? Lively’s allegations in December 2024 that Baldoni harassed her on the set of It Ends With Us, and then leveraged his influence in an attempt to smear her. Baldoni fired back with a legal nuke: suing not just Lively, but also her husband Ryan Reynolds, her longtime publicist Leslie Sloane, and even The New York Times over its reporting.
Lively’s team says that move wasn’t about defending his reputation; it was about sending a chilling message to survivors: “Speak up, and we will destroy you.”
Attorneys for Lively tore into Baldoni for trying to invalidate AB 933, a California law granting sexual harassment victims legal immunity from retaliatory defamation suits. “Mr. Baldoni has gone from monetizing a brand devoted to believing and supporting women, to tearing down the very laws that protect them,” they wrote in a statement to Us Weekly.
Lively also says that Baldoni’s claims are legally time-barred. In a court filing, her team called his complaint “vengeful and rambling”, insisting it does not hold up under scrutiny.
Reynolds is standing firm with Lively and calling Baldoni “thin-skinned” while positioning himself as a “supportive spouse” in her legal battle, but Baldoni’s lawyers shot back, labeling Reynolds a “co-conspirator” and accusing Lively of using media smoke screens to shift attention.
The attorney of Baldoni, Bryan Freedman, didn’t mince words either. In a scathing response to Daily Mail, he called Lively’s team “rattled” and accused her of dodging serious conversations about survivor rights while promoting haircare and alcohol products. “She doesn’t need discovery to find out who smeared her,” he quipped. “Just a mirror will do.”
With a trial date set for March 9, 2026, the stakes can’t be higher. If the court rules in Lively’s favor, it would set a powerful precedent in how Hollywood handles harassment allegations and retaliation lawsuits.
If Baldoni wins? The chill for future whistleblowers could be devastating. It is more than a celebrity spat; this is a battle taking place in a courtroom, with serious implications for free speech, victim protection laws, and the dark underbelly of an industry that struggles even to this day with the question of accountability. And with every new legal filing, the temperature just keeps rising.
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