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The fallout from Blake Lively’s 11th-hour deal to avoid a years-long trial is making headlines in the case of alleged sexual harassment on set. And it ends with us He saw both sides vying for a legal and public relations advantage.
Baldoni’s lawyers focused on not paying any financial damages to Lively, whose legal saga began in 2024 when she accused the director and his production company Wayfarer of orchestrating a plan to undermine her reputation in retaliation for speaking out about misconduct on the film’s set.
On the other hand, Lively’s lawyers celebrated Baldoni’s admission in the joint statement that the actress’s claims were “worth hearing.” They also made a bold bet: Lively will soon receive damages and recover her legal costs through a California law aimed at protecting victims of sexual harassment from retaliatory defamation lawsuits. If not, the settlement would involve no financial concession after years of legal wrangling and not-so-big headlines. Michael Gottlieb, Lively’s lead attorney, called preserving the claim a “key issue” on an industry podcast after the deal was reached.
The maneuver ended in a huff on Friday when the court ordered Baldoni to pay Lively’s legal fees but denied her request for damages. The decision ends her last chance to get compensation in the case.
Now, Baldoni’s lawyers are claiming victory.
“All Blake Lively had to do was say, ‘No, I’m not settling. Let’s go to trial and a jury of our peers, and let’s see what we can get,'” Brian Friedman said. The Megyn Kelly ShowThe full agreement to settle the case was discussed today, Monday. “If it’s that good, why would you settle a case without any money exchanging hands? It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t pass the smell test.”
When the deal was announced last month, Friedman downplayed Lively’s remaining claim as “procedural.”
“It’s pretty standard,” Friedman added in an interview. Entertainment tonight. “But when you want to show off and call a loss a victory, this is your attempt to do so.”
On Friday, Lively’s spokesperson used the same language about what he described as a “procedural” decision.
The dispute over a new application of a barely tested state law has swung around in federal court in California. The court said that this law “does not create an end to circumvention of the entire set of carefully crafted federal procedural rules designed to protect the rights of parties.”
“It instead creates a narrow exception to the usual litigation process to obtain a specific and limited type of relief,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Lehman wrote in the ruling. “Compensations and punitive damages do not fall within this exception.”
By Gottlieb’s reasoning, Lively had given up her chances of winning her three remaining legal claims, which did not include the underlying sexual harassment claim after being dismissed earlier in the case, to focus entirely on her assertion under California’s law to prevent the weaponization of defamation claims. Lively’s legal team lost that bet, or at least didn’t quite win it (she got legal fees).
“He didn’t get the outcome they were hoping to get in this case,” Friedman said of Gottlieb, estimating the cost of the litigation to Lively at $30 million to $60 million. “When you file a case and hope you win that case, if you have the evidence that you’re right, you go to court, so it was easy for us to end up in court.”
If you asked either party, they would likely say the issue was never about money in the first place. For Lively, it was about accountability and exposing the smear machine that threatened her reputation. For Baldoni, it was a matter of justification.
Although there will never be a definitive answer as to who came out on top in the court of public opinion, it appears that sentiment against Lively has shifted as the lawsuit escalates.
“The reaction to Ms. Lively filing this lawsuit has been positive,” Gottlieb said. City Podcast last month. “That began to change after the Wayfarer Parties filed a defamation lawsuit and went on a press tour calling her a liar. That’s why we focused on holding them accountable for filing a frivolous lawsuit.”
The final issue remaining before the court is how much Baldoni must pay in legal fees. However, there’s nothing stopping Lively from filing another lawsuit for damages over his alleged retaliatory defamation claim, though Friedman believes it’s time to move on.
