Although they reached a settlement in May 2026, the legal battle between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively continues to escalate. In fact, the Gossip Girl actress has now filed another multi-million-dollar lawsuit against her It Ends With Us director and co-star.
People reported that Lively submitted a request on Monday, June 29, seeking $8.04 million in legal fees and more than $539,000 in litigation expenses from Baldoni after his defamation lawsuit against her was thrown out. A judge ordered Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, to respond by July 13, which they did.
According to court documents obtained by People, Baldoni and the Wayfarer team pushed back against Lively’s petition and described it as “anything but a typical fee motion.” They argued that Lively’s attorneys charged “excessive” hourly rates and that the case was “overstaffed,” citing “multiple lawyers at the same hearings, numerous charges for lawyers conferencing, conferring, or strategizing with one another, and, to put it mildly, extremely excessive research and online investigation.”
Baldoni is now asking Judge Lewis Liman to deny Lively’s request in its entirety or to reduce any fees awarded to her.
“Lively fails to meet her burden to present credible evidence showing that the fees and costs she seeks to recover are reasonable and, accordingly, her fee motion should be denied in its entirety,” the filing stated. “At minimum, the Court should substantially reduce the request, using as a benchmark the $181,622.70 the Times sought after securing dismissal of Count II on its separate motion to dismiss – the same outcome Lively achieved.”
Baldoni’s response to Lively’s latest filing against him comes shortly after he and his wife, Emily Baldoni, spoke out for the first time since his legal war with Lively began in late 2024.
“We’ve had to wrestle with so many things and try to understand so many things, like how could something like this even happen? Let alone disguised as a fight for women. So much to unpack,” Emily explained in an Instagram video shared on July 8. She also revealed that both she and Baldoni have endured “a lot of trauma” that makes it difficult to speak openly about the situation.
Baldoni noted, “What I will say is that there have been so many painful things that have been spoken into existence over the last couple of years. That created so much noise, and we didn’t want to add to the noise. So we just wanted to let the justice system run its course.”
As for their current wellbeing, Baldoni said, “We are healing. If you’ve ever been through something traumatic, you know that healing isn’t linear. It looks different every day.”
Even though the Baldonis didn’t name-drop Lively, sources say she’s infuriated by the video. “Blake watched every second of the video, and she was absolutely furious,” an insider told Rob Shuter’s Naughty But Nice. “She believes Justin is trying to rewrite history and recast himself as the victim. That’s not how she sees it.”
Despite her anger, Lively intends to stay silent. “She’s not taking the bait,” a source claimed. “Blake has no interest in giving this another news cycle. In her mind, the case is over, and she’s determined to keep it that way.”
Meanwhile, Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, is said to be “enraged.” According to another insider, “He thinks Justin is reopening wounds that everyone worked incredibly hard to close. He doesn’t understand why anyone would want to drag this back into the spotlight.”
Sources alleged that Lively and Reynolds did consider issuing a response to the Baldonis. Still, in the end, they felt that “silence was their strongest move” because “responding only amplifies his message. They think the most powerful statement they can make is saying nothing.”
“Blake has moved on, even if Justin hasn’t,” a separate source added.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source stylecaster.com ’
