Justin Baldoni Reportedly Loses High-Stakes Court Battle to Blake Lively
Justin Baldoni’s $400 million extortion and defamation suit against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds is over — U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman dismissed the case in New York on October 31, 2025.
Quick update: Justin Baldoni's $400 million lawsuit against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds is over. A federal judge just entered final judgment after Baldoni and his team blew their appeal deadline. Translation: case closed.
What the judge decided
On October 31, 2025, U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in the Southern District of New York finalized the dismissal. Baldoni had until October 17, 2025 to tell the court why the case should keep going after it was tossed in June. He and his lawyers didn’t file anything. No reasons, no arguments, nothing. So the court shut the door for good on the suit targeting both Lively and Reynolds.
How this all started
This fight traces back to a formal complaint Lively filed in December, tied to the production of It Ends With Us. Her filing described the set as hostile enough that an all-hands meeting was called. At that meeting, she asked Baldoni to stop specific behavior she said made the workplace uncomfortable.
- Stop showing her nude videos or images of women
- Stop talking to her about his pornography addiction
- Stop discussing sexual experiences in front of her
- Stop bringing up Lively's weight
The promo fight that made things messier
Lively's complaint also says Wayfarer Studios and the cast agreed to steer the movie's marketing toward her character's strength and resilience, not frame it as primarily a story about domestic violence. She claims Baldoni ignored that in interviews and leaned into the heavier, issue-driven angle anyway. From there, the legal situation escalated, and Baldoni's side eventually named Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds, in the lawsuit too.
The alleged PR campaign
Lively further alleged that Baldoni and his PR manager, Melissa Nathan, discussed ways to launch a social media effort to damage her reputation. Her filing included 22 pages of texts between Baldoni's publicist and Nathan. One line in particular jumps off the page:
They wanted to have Lively 'buried.'
Where things stand now
The judge's original dismissal in June stands, and with no appeal argument filed by the October 17 cutoff, the court made it official on October 31. No revival, no do-over. For Baldoni's $400 million extortion and defamation case against Lively and Reynolds, that’s the ballgame.