Blake Lively, who sought $10 million for legal costs, is awarded $519,000

NEW YORK – A federal judge on Aug 26 awarded actress Blake Lively US$407,000 (S$519,000) in legal fees and related costs associated with one part of the legal battle with co-star and director Justin Baldoni that emerged from the making of the 2024 movie It Ends With Us.

The figure was a small fraction of the actress’ request to recoup more than US$8 million that her lawyers said had been expended in defending her from an unsuccessful defamation suit that Baldoni and his associates filed against her.

While a motion for legal fees is common after a lawsuit has been resolved, the deliberations over these costs were closely watched because Lively had received no financial compensation in agreeing to settle her broader dispute with Baldoni’s company.

But that settlement, in May, just weeks before the case was set to go to trial, allowed Lively to continue pursuing a payout related to the dismissed defamation case.

In her original lawsuit, Lively said that while making the film, she was sexually harassed by Baldoni. The suit said she then became the target of an online retaliation campaign that damaged her reputation. Baldoni and his associates responded to that suit with one of their own that said she had defamed them, characterising her allegations as false depictions of innocuous interactions on the set.

In calculating the costs that Lively is due, Judge Lewis J. Liman of the US District Court in Manhattan limited the payout narrowly to her legal team’s defence against the defamation claim and related legal work. He rejected some specific requests that would have increased the award, such as hours billed towards media relations.

In a statement after the judge’s ruling, Lively’s lawyers Esra Hudson and Michael Gottlieb said financial compensation was never the motive for her lawsuit. They said Lively had “lifted the curtain” for others who are targeted by retaliatory online campaigns and “set the precedent for others to come forward and expose similar conduct”.

“As we have said from day one,” the statement said, “Blake Lively’s case was never about money – it was about accountability.”

Bryan Freedman, the lead lawyer for Baldoni and his associates, said in a statement that the original US$8 million request had been unreasonable. He called the ruling a “significant victory for my clients” and said it “sends a clear message that, no matter how powerful you may be, the courtroom is not a place to take advantage of the law for your own personal gain”.

The production of It Ends With Us, a movie about a relationship ravaged by domestic violence, spawned a fierce year-and-a-half-long legal battle over the reasonable bounds of Hollywood public relations in a digital world.

Lively argued that people hired by Baldoni and his company used strategic interactions with the news media and manipulation on social media to impugn her character and to discredit any allegations about Baldoni’s behaviour on set that might emerge.

Baldoni and his lawyers have denied that Lively was sexually harassed or retaliated against. They have said that the actor hired crisis public relations professionals to protect him amid fears that Lively would go public.

Liman dismissed Lively’s sexual harassment allegations on procedural grounds. But, before the settlement, he had agreed to let several retaliation claims against corporate defendants, including Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer, proceed to trial.

After the settlement, the judge awarded Lively legal fees and costs based on a recently enacted California law. Passed in 2023, it was designed to prevent people from using defamation suits to silence others from coming forward with complaints of sexual harassment or assault.

In one of the first applications of the law, Liman found that Lively’s case fulfilled the criteria of the statute, which requires the accuser to have made a sexual misconduct complaint “without malice”. But, citing legal procedure, he allowed her only to recover legal fees and costs, not punitive or compensatory damages that could have led to a much higher payout. NYTIMES