Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni feud finally enters NYC courtroom
NEW YORK — After more than a month in the court of public opinion, the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni battle finally entered an actual courtroom Monday in New York.
Attorneys for both “It Ends With Us” stars sparred in Manhattan Federal Court before Judge Lewis Liman, who eventually issued a directive for both sides to comply with ethical standards. He also combined Lively’s initial $250 million sexual harassment lawsuit with Baldoni’s $400 million defamation claim.
Lively, 37, and Baldoni, 41, were not in attendance for the status conference. Neither was Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, who is named as a defendant in Baldoni’s suit along with Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloane.
Lively claimed that Baldoni, who also directed “It Ends With Us,” sexually harassed her while they were filming the movie, which itself chronicles an abusive relationship between Lively and Baldoni’s characters. She filed her lawsuit on Dec. 22 in California. Her attorneys promised in Monday’s hearing to file an amended complaint in New York by Friday that would include several more as-yet-unnamed defendants. The California complaint will then be dismissed.
Baldoni, who built a brand challenging traditional norms of masculinity and even wrote a book titled “Man Enough,” denied Lively’s claims and countersued for defamation shortly afterward. Baldoni’s suit was filed in New York and included the New York Times as a defendant, as the paper was the first to publish Lively’s allegations.
Following the suits, Lively and Baldoni both engaged in extensive antagonistic publicity campaigns, which reached a new level on Saturday when one of Baldoni’s lawyers created an entire website to tell his side of the story.
Those public efforts were the main subject in court Monday. Lively’s team requested the hearing following several actions from Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman, which they claimed would prejudice the jury pool against Lively.
Lively has suffered an “ongoing campaign of retaliation for reporting sexual harassment,” her attorney Michael Gottlieb told the court. “It has been devastating to her.”
However, Judge Liman did not institute a gag order in the case, which was previously requested by Lively’s side. Gottlieb said Monday they were no longer asking for it.
The ethical standards rule imposed by the judge could slow or stop Baldoni’s side from releasing more documents and videos in the case. Lively’s team also asked the judge to strike one of the documents on Baldoni’s new website, a 168-page “timeline of relevant events” that was also filed in court.
Liman said the public already had “plenty to feast upon” in the case but did not immediately rule on the status of the document.
Lively has additionally accused Baldoni’s PR team of astroturfing a social media campaign to make his narrative the dominant one on the internet, including across TikTok, Reddit and Instagram. However, that claim was not the subject of Monday’s hearing.
Monday’s status conference was moved up from a mid-February date at Lively’s request. A trial in the case is scheduled to begin on March 9, 2026. Liman said Monday he considered moving up the trial date but decided against it to allow for a lengthy discovery process.
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