Judge Tosses Out Justin Baldoni’s $400 Million Countersuit

Ever since It Ends With Us premiered in the fall of 2024, the movie’s cast has been embroiled in drama. And it sounds like the public dispute won’t be ending anytime soon. After co-stars Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively filed damning lawsuits against one another, a judge set their court date for early 2026.

On Jan. 27, 2025, New York federal judge Lewis J. Liman ruled that Baldoni and Lively’s case will be taken to court on March 9, 2026. While that is still quite some time away, the judge set an initial conference between the actors’ teams for early February 2025, during which the attorneys will address complaints about the publicity the lawsuit has received prior to trial. This comes five days after Lively’s team requested a gag order on Baldoni’s lawyer, who had been making several public comments and leaked footage from It Ends With Us.

As the heated battle continues throughout 2025 and into 2026, here’s a timeline of the whole situation.

August 2024: Fans Notice Tension

Before anything litigious went down, Baldoni and Lively’s behavior leading up to the It Ends With Us premiere was sending up red flags. Several people began to notice the movie’s two lead actors strangely weren’t doing any press together. Speculation about a rift exploded after the premiere red carpet event, where Baldoni did not take any photos or interact with any of his cast members.

Dec. 21, 2024: Lively Files A Legal Complaint

On Dec. 21, the New York Times published the legal complaint that Lively had filed against Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment on the film’s set and orchestrating a smear campaign against her during the movie’s promotion. Ten days later, Lively officially filed a lawsuit on these claims against Baldoni and his PR team.

Jan. 16, 2025: Baldoni Sues Lively

A couple weeks after Lively’s suit, Baldoni shot back with one of his own. In his Jan. 16 filing, Baldoni accused Lively of defamation, claiming that she was intentionally misrepresenting his actions in her lawsuit.

Feb. 1, 2025: Baldoni Creates A Website With His Timeline Of Events

At the start of February, Baldoni shared a massive dump of screenshots of redacted emails and text messages to a website he created in an attempt to prove his side of the story. A few days later, Lively’s lawyers subpoenaed all of Baldoni’s phone records, claiming that the website Baldoni and his lawyer Bryan Freedman created left out important context.

"We will now receive all of the 'receipts' that, unsurprisingly, are nowhere to be found on Mr. Freedman’s website," the statement read. "And like Ms. Lively, those 'receipts' will have their day in court."

Freedman responded to the subpoena: "This massive fishing expedition demonstrates that they are desperately seeking any factual basis for their provably false claims. They will find none."

Feb. 18, 2025: Lively Amends Her Complaint To Include 2 Unnamed Co-Stars

After Baldoni’s website went live, Lively’s legal team added significant claims to her formal complaint, most notably mentioning that Baldoni made other women on the It Ends With Us set “uncomfortable,” and two other actresses in the movie are prepared to testify against him, per The Hollywood Reporter.

“These victim-witnesses have given Ms. Lively permission to share their communications in the Amended Complaint as they are laid out, and they will testify and produce documents in the discovery process,” a spokesperson told the publication.

THR speculated these unnamed actresses may be Jenny Slate and Isabela Ferrer — the only other female leads besides Lively in the movie — but that has yet to be confirmed.

March 6, 2025: Lively & Reynolds Request Protective Order For Private Texts

During a March 6 hearing, Lively and Reynolds’ legal team team asked for a protective order over concerns that Baldoni would “leak” messages between Lively and her A-list friends. “There is a significant chance of irreparable harm if marginal conversations with high profile individuals with no relevance to the case were to fall into wrong hands,” the couple’s attorney, Meryl Conant Governski, said during the virtual court hearing, per Page Six.

“There are 100 million reasons for these parties to leak information because the PR value is greater than complying with the court’s orders,” she continued. (The public has already seen some texts between Lively and Baldoni, in which she referred to her A-list supporters as her “dragons.”) The couple’s team is seeking an “attorney’s eyes only” category for sensitive information, which would include texts and Lively’s medical records.

In response, Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, agreed that Lively’s medical records should remain private. However, Freedman took issue with the notion of protecting celebrity texts. “What the other side is asking for because there is celebrity, because there is powerful people in the industry … somehow there is a different law that applies to them,” he said during the hearing, per Deadline. Freedman also said that he had “gone to great lengths to not mention third parties by name,” per Page Six.

May 9, 2025: Taylor Swift Is Subpoenaed By Baldoni’s Team

Despite Lively and Reynolds’ request, one of their most famous friends was publicly wrangled into the legal drama in early May. Baldoni’s team subpoenaed Taylor Swift in April though it was not made public until May 9. At the time, a rep for Swift slammed the subpoena, noting Swift “never set foot on the set of this movie,” accusing the legal move of being “designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”

The subpoena is likely in relation to Baldoni’s claim that he felt “pressured” by a “megacelebrity friend” of Lively’s to adjust a scene in the script during a meeting at her penthouse.

A day after the subpoena, Lively’s rep similarly criticized the action as an attempt to capitalize on the media frenzy around the case.

“Mr. Baldoni, Mr. Sarowitz, and team continue to turn a case of sexual harassment and retaliation into entertainment for the tabloids, going as far as suggesting that they sell tickets to a concert venue - Madison Square Garden - to witness Ms. Lively’s deposition, to subpoenaing Taylor Swift, a woman who has given a voice to millions all over the world," Lively’s rep said in a statement to People. "This is a very serious legal matter, not Barnum & Bailey’s Circus.”

May 12, 2025: Swift’s Longtime Law Firm Responds To Their Subpoena

Baldoni’s team subpoenaed Swift’s law firm, Venable, in their case against Lively on April 29. On May 12, the firm responded in their own filing, calling the subpoena an “abuse of the discovery process.”

“Venable had nothing to do with the film at issue or any of the claims or defenses asserted in the underlying lawsuit,” the firm wrote, per a May 13 Billboard report. “There is no reason for this subpoena other than to distract from the facts of the case and impose undue burden and expense on a non-party.”

May 14, 2025: Baldoni’s Lawyer Claims Lively Tried To “Intimidate” Swift Into Supporting Her

A May 14 letter from Baldoni’s lawyer to the judge outlined their reasons for subpoenaing Swift’s lawyers at Venable. “The Lively Defendants' insistence that the Subpoena seeks irrelevant information is wrong,” Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s lawyer, wrote in the letter.

According to Freedman, the subpoena was made to uncover “discovery relating to witness tampering and evidence spoliation.” He added that a “source who is highly likely to have reliable information” gave him a tip that claimed Lively asked Swift to delete text messages.

Freedman also alleged that Lively’s attorney contacted Swift’s lawyer “and demanded that Ms. Swift release a statement of support for Ms. Lively, intimating that if Ms. Swift refused to do so, private text messages of a personal nature in Ms. Lively's possession would be released.”

Freedman claimed that the informant said that Swift's representative “addressed these inappropriate and apparently extortionate threats” from Lively’s legal team. According to him, this could be evidence of “an attempt to intimidate and coerce a percipient witness in this litigation,” which is why they subpoenaed these communications.

Lively’s attorney Mike Gottlieb responded to the letter in a statement to People. “This is categorically false. We unequivocally deny all of these so-called allegations, which are cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources, and completely untethered from reality,” he said. “This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer parties’ lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process. We will imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here.”

May 15, 2025: Lively's Lawyer Slams Claims She Tried To Pressure Swift

Following Freedman’s letter, Lively’s legal team requested that the judge strike it from the record, adding that the letter in question was full of “scandalous and defamatory allegations about Ms. Lively” and “abus[ed] the Court’s docket,” per People.

On May 15, Freedman responded by doubling down on his claims, submitting a signed affidavit under the penalty of perjury. In it, he claimed the still unnamed source was “very closely linked to Taylor Swift.”

Freedman alleged that Lively’s legal team had contacted Swift’s back in February and “requested, on Ms. Lively' s behalf, that Taylor Swift make a social media statement in support of Ms. Lively given her absence from the Super Bowl that year, and stated that if Ms. Swift failed to do so, Ms. Lively would release '10 years' of private texts with Ms. Swift.”

But Judge Liman granted Gottlieb’s motion to strike Freedman’s letter and affidavit, deciding that it was “improper” and “irrelevant to any issue before this Court.” In his decision, he warned Freedman, “Counsel is advised that future misuse of the Court’s docket may be met with sanctions.”

Following Liman’s decision, Gottlieb released a statement to People: “Another day, another bogus filing designed for clickbait. We reiterate our unequivocal denial.” He added, “These claims remain completely untethered from reality — to be clear: The conversations as described did not happen, and we will hold Mr. Freedman accountable for his misconduct.”

June 9, 2025: Baldoni’s Countersuit Is Thrown Out

On June 9, Judge Liman tossed out Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit against Lively and Reynolds. Reminder: In the January filing, Baldoni accused Lively of defamation, citing her December 2024 legal complaint. According to CNN, Liman ruled that Lively’s complaint is “protected by the fair report privilege,” hence his decision to dismiss Baldoni’s countersuit. Baldoni’s $250 million libel suit against the The New York Times was also thrown out.

In his decision, Liman wrote that the January suit “alleged that Reynolds and [publicist Leslie] Sloane made additional statements accusing Baldoni of sexual misconduct and that the Times made additional statements accusing the Wayfarer Parties of engaging in a smear campaign,” per Page Six.

But according to Liman, those accusations do not meet the criteria for defamation. “The Wayfarer Parties have not alleged that Reynolds, Sloane or the Times would have seriously doubted these statements were true based on the information available to them, as is required for them to be liable for defamation under applicable law,” Liman continued. Baldoni now has until June 23 to file an amended complaint on the allegations of breach of implied covenant and tortious interference with contract.

As of publication, neither Baldoni nor Reynolds’ lawyers have commented on Liman’s decision. However, Lively’s team released a statement about the ruling. “Today's opinion is a total victory and a complete vindication for Blake Lively, along with those that Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer Parties dragged into their retaliatory lawsuit, including Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Sloane and The New York Times,” they told USA Today.

“As we have said from day one, this '$400 million' lawsuit was a sham, and the Court saw right through it," her lawyers’ statement continued. "We look forward to the next round, which is seeking attorneys' fees, treble damages and punitive damages against Baldoni, Sarowitz, Nathan, and the other Wayfarer Parties who perpetrated this abusive litigation.”