Blake Lively is asking a judge to dismiss Justin Baldoni‘s $US400 million (approx. $635 million) lawsuit against her, arguing that her It Ends With Us co-star is “weaponising” his own defamation claim to retaliate against her for publicly speaking out about her sexual harassment accusations against him.
Lively’s motion to dismiss, filed on Thursday (overnight in Australia), comes just two days after her husband Ryan Reynolds also filed a motion to dismiss, asking the judge to drop him from the case.
Baldoni, his business associates and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, are suing Lively and Reynolds, along with their publicist, for $US400 million (approx. $635 million), claiming that the Hollywood power couple and their team “hijacked” his film and then sought out to “destroy” his career.
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(The couple’s publicist, Leslie Sloane, has also filed her own motion to dismiss.)
Attorneys for Lively argued that she is protected under a California law that prohibits retaliatory defamation lawsuits based on sexual harassment allegations. The legislation was signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom in October 2023.
Baldoni has accused Lively of working to “destroy” him professionally by collaborating with the New York Times on a “self-serving” story about the complaint she filed with the California Civil Rights Department in December, in which she accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and retaliation. But in their latest filing, Lively’s attorneys argue she was “legally entitled to file her complaint and disclose it to the public,” including with the press.
(The New York Times has previously said it stands by its reporting and has asked the court to dismiss the $US250 million [approx. $400 million) lawsuit the publication is facing from Baldoni.)
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“The Wayfarer Parties have created more liability for themselves by their malicious efforts to sue Ms. Lively ‘into oblivion,'” attorneys for Lively wrote in their motion to dismiss.
Baldoni has denied all sexual harassment and retaliation claims made by Lively. His attorney previously told CNN that “anyone actively involved in any possible connection with this abhorrent conduct will be sued into oblivion.”
In asking the court to dismiss Baldoni’s claims, Lively’s attorneys state in their filing that nothing in the lawsuit “resembles an actionable legal claim,” calling it a “public relations instrument” with the sole purpose of carrying out Baldoni’s “sinister campaign” to punish Lively for speaking out about sexual harassment and retaliation.
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Lively’s attorneys argue that “in lieu of concrete facts,” the complaint from Baldoni and others “resorts to implausible conjecture and conspiracy theories to allege that Ms. Lively ‘falsified’ her allegations.”
“On the one hand, the Wayfarer Parties insist that Ms. Lively is an immensely powerful Hollywood superstar who, along with her influential husband, wielded power to steal creative control over the film,” Lively’s filing states. “But on the other hand, they claim she was so powerless that the only way she could have any power was by manufacturing sexual harassment allegations almost a year in advance in a Machiavellian long game. These two concepts contradict each other and therefore cannot coexist.”
Lively’s attorneys are also asking the judge to award her attorneys fees, and treble damages and punitive damages.
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In Reynolds’ request to drop him from the lawsuit, his attorneys argued that Baldoni’s case against amounts to “hurt feelings” and that his only involvement has been as a “supportive spouse.”
Reynolds’ filing claimed that the lawsuit filed by Baldoni and others is based on two times that Reynolds allegedly called Baldoni a “predator,” but said that nothing in the lawsuit suggests that Reynolds did not believe this to be true.
“Mr. Reynolds genuinely, perhaps passionately, believes that Mr. Baldoni’s behaviour is reflective of a ‘predator,'” Reynolds’ filing reads, adding that “calling someone a ‘predator’ amounts to a constitutionally protected opinion.”
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Lively filed an amended complaint last month, alleging other women also raised claims about Baldoni’s behaviour on set.
Baldoni has denied those allegations.
CNN has reached out to his representatives for comment on Lively’s motion to dismiss.
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