Justin Baldoni‘s lawyers responded Thursday to Blake Lively‘s attempt to throw out his defamation suit, arguing that a California law meant to protect harassment victims doesn’t apply to Lively’s “fabricated” claims.
The actor-director filed a $400 million lawsuit against Lively, his co-star, and her husband Ryan Reynolds in January, arguing that they set out to destroy his career and hijack his movie, “It Ends With Us,” with false allegations of harassment on set.
In a motion to dismiss the suit last month, Lively’s team argued that her allegations — which were first made in a California civil rights complaint that was shared with the New York Times — are protected by litigation privilege.
Lively’s lawyers also invoked the Protecting Survivors from Weaponized Defamation Lawsuits Act, a 2023 law that protects harassment accusers from retaliatory defamation suits. The law provides immunity from suit and allows a prevailing defendant to claim attorneys’ fees and damages.
In response on Thursday, Baldoni’s lawyers noted that the protection applies only to harassment claims with a “reasonable basis” that are made “without malice.” They argue that Lively in fact made up the allegations, and that therefore the law does not apply.
“Lively fabricated her allegations of sexual harassment, either wholesale or by exaggerating benign (and not harassing) interactions in a concerted, malicious effort to seize control of the Film and later to restore her reputation after a well-publicized series of marketing missteps that sullied her reputation,” Baldoni’s lawyers argue.
Baldoni’s lead lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said in a statement that Lively’s team is attempting to set a “dangerous precedent” by using the law to undermine Baldoni’s right to sue under the First Amendment.
“Ms. Lively and her circle of Hollywood elites cannot prevent my clients from exercising their constitutional right to petition the court to clear their names from her false and harmful claims,” Freedman said. “This right protects not only Mr. Baldoni and the Wayfarer parties in this particular case, but all Americans in the future who have false accusations levied against them and seek relief from our justice system. This must stop here, and we will continue to fight against this blatant attempt to block access to the court system and to weaken our nation’s Constitution to serve those who are in the position of power.”
Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb, Lively’s attorneys, said Friday that Baldoni is essentially seeking to invalidate the California statute for all victims of harassment.
“They’re not just saying that it doesn’t apply to Ms. Lively – they’re saying it’s unconstitutional and no woman should ever have these protections,” they said. “That’s right: Justin Baldoni, the man who has built his brand on supposedly speaking up for victims, believes that the First Amendment rights of victims of sexual assault and harassment to speak out should give way to the rights of perpetrators to sue their victims ‘into oblivion.’”
Baldoni’s response also contends that the litigation privilege does not apply because Lively first made the allegations well in advance of lodging the civil rights complaint.
Baldoni’s team also cites an interview Lively gave at the 2022 Forbes Power Women’s summit, which they argue supports their contention that she intended to seize creative control of the movie. In the interview, Lively stated that when she was starting out as as actor, “I knew that they just wanted me to show up and look cute and stand on a little pink sticker where I’m supposed to go and say what I’m supposed to say.
“But I also knew that like that wasn’t fulfilling for me — that I wanted to be part of the storytelling . . .. And sometimes I would have people who really resented that because they were like, ‘we just hired you to be an actor,'” she continued. “I wouldn’t reveal that I actually need to have authorship in order to feel fulfilled. So, I think that for them, sometimes that might have felt like a rug pull because you’re like, you’re trying to assert yourself into something that we didn’t hire you to.”
Baldoni’s team argues: “That is exactly what happened on the set of ‘It Ends With Us.'”
Lively’s spokesperson cited numerous allegations of harassment from her complaint, including his discussion of pornography, sharing details of his sex life, improvising intimacy during a scene, and casting his friend in the role of an OB/GYN for a birth scene.
Freedman shot back on Friday afternoon, saying that Lively and her team are “rattled,” and had resorted “to making inflammatory remarks to steer focus away from the actual facts.”
“Clearly they want to divert the public’s attention from the receipts, the actual documents, video footage and additional evidence shown that make it irrefutable that there was no sexual harassment,” Freedman said. “It’s also surprising that Ms. Lively and her team are suddenly speaking so passionately about the hard won rights of the survivor community, considering she sidestepped this topic for the entirety of the film campaign, focusing instead on her hair care and alcohol products which at that time caused the organic backlash that she received. She does not need discovery to find out who smeared her. Just a mirror will do.”
