Justin Baldoni is suing Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds for civil extortion, defamation
Justin Baldoni sued Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds for civil extortion, defamation and other actions in the lawsuit filed Thursday.
Baldoni accused Lively of torturing him, his family and colleagues in a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York and obtained by Fox News Digital. The actor requested a trial by jury and a judgment of $400,000,000.
Lively sued Baldoni first time for sexual harassment after the two starred together in the Colleen Hoover film adaptation, “It Ends With Us.” Since the film premiered in August, Lively has also accused Baldoni of engaging in a deliberate smear campaign to destroy her reputation.
However, Baldoni – along with Wayfarer Studios, Jamey Heath and others – paints a different story in the actor’s lawsuit itself.
Justin Baldoni sued Blake Lively for civil extortion, defamation and more in a lawsuit filed on January 16. (Getty Images)
“Prosecutors now have no choice but to strike back armed only with the truth – and a mountain of concrete evidence refuting Lively’s allegations,” the court documents read.
“Heartbreakingly, the film that Baldoni envisioned years ago to honor survivors of domestic violence by telling their story, with the lofty goal of positively impacting the world, has now been overshadowed beyond recognition solely as a result of Lively’s actions and cruelty.”
Baldoni’s legal team argued that Lively had no evidence of a deliberate smear campaign and was instead working to repair her reputation by accusing the actor and others of sexual harassment.
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“But Lively could not tolerate her publicly tarnished image for a second, and furthermore could not accept that it was entirely of her own making,” the lawsuit states. “She needed a scapegoat. And instead of admitting and taking responsibility for her own misfortunes, she chose to blame the accusers, in a malicious and unforgivably public way.”
“When she and Reynolds couldn’t get Baldoni and Wayfarer to read a statement she and her representatives had prepared, forcing them to ‘take responsibility’ in defense of Lively’s actions, she waited for months, preparing to publicly attack Baldoni by falsely claiming he had sexually assaulted her. harassed.”
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni were seen on the set of “It Ends With Us” on January 12, 2024. (Photo: Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
Baldoni’s legal team included text messages, emails and more as “excessive evidence” to support the “Jane the Virgin” star’s claims.
“This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of tampered evidence detailing a two-faced attempt by Blake Lively and her team to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their companies by spreading grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and falsified information to the media,” Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “It is clear, based on our total willingness to provide all of the complete text messages, emails, video recordings and other documentary evidence shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret. Blake Lively either seriously misled her team or deliberately and knowingly misrepresented the truth.”
“Ms. Lively will never again be allowed to continue to exploit real victims of real harassment solely for her own personal gain at the expense of those without power,” the statement continued. “Let’s not forget, Ms. Lively and her team tried to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for horribly selfish reasons through their own dangerous manipulation of the media before they even took any legal action. We know the truth, and now the public does. Justin and his team have nothing to hide, the documents don’t lie.”
A representative for Lively and Reynolds did not respond to Fox News Digital’s immediate request for comment.
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Blake Lively accused Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment. (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Vividly detailed allegations of sexual harassmentretaliation, intentional infliction of emotional pain, negligence and more by Baldoni and film producer Jamey Heath in a complaint filed first with the California Department of Civil Rights and later in federal court.
According to the complaint, obtained by Fox News Digital, the actress called an “all hands” meeting on Jan. 4, 2024, regarding the alleged behavior of Baldoni and Heath, a meeting that her husband Reynolds attended.
“Ms. Lively was forced to speak directly to them about the misconduct of Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath, and began doing so months before filming began,” the complaint states. “The concerns she expressed were not just for her, but for the other female cast and crew, some of whom also spoke out.”
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Justin Baldoni is suing The New York Times for defamation following Blake Lively’s sexual harassment lawsuit. (Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images)
After Lively’s lawsuit, so did Baldoni sued by The New York Times for slander.
However, Livelyn’s team noted that her allegations were “supported by concrete facts.”
“This is not a ‘feud’ stemming from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation,” her lawyers told Fox News Digital. “As Ms. Lively’s complaint alleges and as we will prove in litigation, Wayfarer [Studios] and his associates engaged in illegal, vindictive astroturfing against Ms. Lively for simply trying to protect herself and others on a movie set. And their response to the lawsuit was to launch new attacks against Ms. Lively since her report.”
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