Baldoni Battles Lively's $8 Million Legal Fee Request

The courtroom sparring between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively just won’t quit. Even after their May settlement ended the broader legal dispute over the It Ends With Us director’s alleged misconduct on set, the two sides are still locked in a financial tug-of-war—this time over who pays for the legal machinery that got them there.

On Monday, July 13, Baldoni’s lawyers fired back at Lively’s request that he cover approximately $8 million in her attorneys’fees and litigation costs. Baldoni’s legal team, represented by Bryan Freedman and Ellyn S. Garofalo, called the request excessive and unreasonable, arguing that Lively failed to justify the astronomical bill with credible evidence. They pointed out that the figure represents compensation for 7,070.20 billable legal hours handled by no fewer than 82 different timekeepers—just to get a single defamation claim dismissed at the pleading stage.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Baldoni’s attorneys actually have a comparison point. The New York Times, when seeking to dismiss that same defamation claim against them in a separate lawsuit, only requested $181,622.70 in attorneys’fees. Baldoni had originally sued the Times for $250 million over accusations that he’d orchestrated a smear campaign against Lively, but that case was dismissed in June 2025. Now his lawyers are essentially asking: if the Times got their case thrown out for under $200,000, how did Lively’s defense cost forty times that amount?

The breakdown of Lively’s request tells part of the story. She’s asking for $7,495,526.87 in attorneys’fees and $539,514.01 in litigation costs. Baldoni’s team characterized the bill as showing“multiple lawyers at the same hearings, numerous charges for lawyers conferencing, conferring, or strategizing with one another, and extremely excessive research and online investigation.”It’s a classic legal move—attacking the reasonableness of the process itself, not just the bottom line.

Judge Lewis J. Liman will ultimately decide how much, if anything, Baldoni has to pay. The judge already ruled in June that Baldoni was liable for Lively’s legal fees under a 2023 California law designed to protect sexual abuse accusers from retaliatory defamation suits. That’s the legal hook Lively’s team hung their fee request on. But liability for fees and the actual amount awarded are two different things—and Monday’s filing shows the fight over the dollar figure has only just begun.

The whole saga started in December 2024 when Lively sued Baldoni for sexual harassment and alleged retaliation. He denied her claims and countersued, but his countersuit was tossed. A settlement emerged in May, complete with a joint statement emphasizing their shared commitment to addressing domestic violence and creating better workplaces. That sounded like closure. Apparently, the legal bills had other ideas.