Blake Lively Demands $8 Million From Justin Baldoni for Legal Fees

When a legal battle ends, the real bill comes due—and in the It Ends With Us saga, Blake Lively is making sure Justin Baldoni knows exactly what his failed countersuit cost her.

On Monday, June 29, court documents revealed that the 38-year-old actress is seeking $8,035,040.88 in attorneys’fees and litigation costs from Baldoni following the dismissal of his defamation lawsuit against her. The breakdown is striking: $7,495,526.87 in legal fees and $539,514.01 in court expenses tied to what her legal team calls the“successful defense of the Wayfarer Action.”In plain terms, Lively wants Baldoni—along with Wayfarer Studios—to foot the bill for the fight he started.

Lively originally filed suit back in December 2024, accusing her It Ends With Us costar and director of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign against her. Baldoni denied the allegations and fired back with his own lawsuit. That countersuit was dismissed by Judge Lewis J. Liman in June 2025. Now, months later and well after both parties reached a settlement out of court in May, Lively’s legal team is pressing for the full amount—and then some. They’ve also signaled they’ll seek additional fees if Baldoni contests the request.

The fee request underscores the sheer scale of the case. Court filings highlight the“significant press attention, with thousands of indexed and syndicated media articles”covering the dispute, which naturally drove up the complexity and cost of the legal work. The discovery process alone involved more than 7,000 documents produced by Lively and tens of thousands more from Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and third parties. Text messages and emails involving everyone from Taylor Swift and Ryan Reynolds to Jenny Slate and Ben Affleck were eventually unsealed and made public—a level of scrutiny few lawsuits ever endure.

Lively’s attorneys framed the fee request as a matter of principle.“Thanks to this landmark decision, those considering using a lawsuit as a weapon of intimidation have been put on notice that there are consequences for doing so,”they said in a statement. It’s a direct callout: don’t weaponize the courts against someone who speaks up. The statement continued that the ruling“creates precedent, imposes accountability, and provides protection to those who may one day find themselves facing similar retaliation for speaking the truth.”

Judge Liman has ordered Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios to respond by July 13. After that, the judge will decide whether to award the full amount, reduce it, or deny it entirely. Meanwhile, both parties issued a joint statement in May acknowledging that“the process presented challenges and recognize concerns raised by Ms. Lively deserved to be heard,”while affirming their commitment to“workplaces free of improprieties.”The settlement brought the case to a close publicly—but the financial reckoning is far from over.