Blake Lively initially seemed ready to move on from her legal battle with her It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni. However, the actress has now reignited the dispute with a significant new demand.
According to People, Lively submitted a request on Monday, June 29, demanding $8.04 million in legal fees and over $539,000 in litigation costs from Baldoni after his defamation lawsuit against her was thrown out. In the filing obtained by People, Lively’s legal team argued that the effort required to defeat Baldoni’s suit was “comprehensive and necessary to achieve the complete win that was secured.”
They added that Lively “has paid, and continues to pay” her own legal bills, and that she will seek “any additional attorneys’ fees” she racks up while pursuing the fee request.
Lively’s latest filing attributes the substantial costs to the case’s high profile, citing “significant press attention, with thousands of indexed and syndicated media articles.” They also pointed to extensive discovery, including “more than 7,000 documents” from Lively and “tens of thousands more from the Wayfarer parties and third parties.”
Despite Lively specifying the amount she believes she’s owed, the war is far from over. Judge Lewis J. Liman has reportedly ordered Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios to respond to Lively’s request by July 13. The judge will then decide “whether to award the full amount, reduce it, or deny portions of the request altogether.”
Lively’s latest move comes after claims that her and Baldoni’s legal dispute was putting a strain on her marriage to Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds. On May 5, Hollywood insider Rob Shuter reported that Reynolds had encouraged Lively to end the fight “long before she was ready.”
“Ryan saw the full picture early,” an insider told Shuter’s Naughty But Nice. “He knew the longer this dragged on, the more it would erode everything—her career, her reputation, even their closest relationships.”
Nevertheless, Lively refused—and those close to the Gossip Girl star alleged that the situation became “deeply personal” to her. “It wasn’t about winning anymore — it was about proving she was right,” a source explained. “She couldn’t see how much it was costing her in real time.”
The lawsuit reportedly affected Lively’s friendships and damaged her reputation, but it wasn’t until she realized the toll it was taking on her marriage that she finally agreed to settle. “The realization hit her all at once,” an insider says. “She had already lost too much—professionally, personally, publicly. The one thing she refused to lose was her marriage.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source stylecaster.com ’
