A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios to pay Blake Lively approximately $407,000 in attorneys’ fees and court costs. The ruling stems from a dismissed defamation lawsuit filed by Baldoni against Lively in 2022.
Judge Lewis Liman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York awarded Lively $363,000 in attorneys’ fees and $44,000 in court costs, following a June decision that Lively was entitled to recover reasonable fees under California Civil Code Section 47.1. The law protects individuals who report sexual misconduct from retaliatory defamation claims.
Lively had initially sought $7.5 million in attorneys’ fees and $540,000 in costs, but Liman found the requested amounts unreasonable. While the judge deemed the billing rates charged by Lively’s attorneys as “not unreasonable” given the case’s complexity, he ruled that the number of hours billed was excessive. The final award represents about 5% of Lively’s original request.
The defamation claim arose after Lively publicly criticized Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer Studios, for alleged misconduct during the filming of It Ends With Us. Baldoni’s lawsuit was dismissed in June, and Liman’s Wednesday ruling finalized the financial consequences of the case.
Lively’s attorneys, Esra Hudson and Michael Gottlieb, stated in a release that the decision was “historic,” marking what they described as the first-ever award of fees and costs under California’s anti-SLAPP law. They emphasized that Lively’s case was “never about money—it was about accountability.”
The ruling does not address the underlying allegations of misconduct but focuses solely on the financial penalties tied to the dismissed lawsuit. Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios have not publicly commented on the decision as of publication.