New York (AFP) – A US judge on Monday rejected a $400 million lawsuit that actor Justin Baldoni filed against former co-star Blake Lively and The New York Times after she accused him of sexual harassment and other misbehavior.
Back in December, the Times reported that Lively had filed a complaint against Baldoni and producer Jamey Heath for allegedly inappropriate behavior and comments during the shooting of the movie “It Ends with Us.” The complaint said Baldoni — who also directed the film — had spoken inappropriately about his sex life and sought to alter the film to include sex scenes that were not in the script and had not been agreed to. It also said Heath had watched Lively while she was topless, despite having been asked to turn away. It further said Baldoni waged a PR campaign to wreck Lively’s reputation.
A lawyer for Wayfarer, the studio behind the film, said in a statement released to the New York Times at the time that neither the studio, its executives, nor its PR team did anything to retaliate against Lively. “These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media,” lawyer Bryan Freedman wrote in December.
Baldoni filed suit in January against the actress, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and the Times, arguing that an article the paper ran in December defamed him. On Monday, Judge Lewis Liman of the US District Court in Manhattan dismissed the lawsuit filed by Baldoni. The judge said the Times had simply reported on Lively’s original legal filing alleging harassment on set and a retaliatory smear campaign, and that it had taken the trouble to seek a reaction from Baldoni to the actress’s allegations. The judge also rejected allegations by Baldoni that Lively, whose Instagram account has more than 43 million followers, had tried to seize control of the film and its promotion.
Baldoni accused her husband, Reynolds, of wrongly describing him as a sexual predator. In a statement carried by US media, Lively’s lawyers celebrated what they called a “total victory” over Baldoni’s “retaliatory lawsuit.” Baldoni’s lawyer did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
Based on a best-selling novel by the US writer Colleen Hoover, “It Ends with Us” is a romantic drama that made more than $350 million at the box office in 2024, making it one of the biggest hits of the year.
© 2024 AFP
