Blake Lively Wants Nearly $8M From Baldoni for Legal Battle

The legal war between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni isn’t quite over—and the bill is about to come due. After Baldoni’s $400 million defamation lawsuit against the It Ends With Us star was tossed out, Lively is now asking the court to make him and Wayfarer foot the bill for what turned out to be a grueling legal defense.

We’re talking nearly $8 million in total. Specifically, Lively is requesting $7,495,526.87 in attorneys’fees plus $539,514.01 in court costs and expenses she incurred while fighting off Baldoni’s claims. That’s not small change, and it speaks to just how resource-intensive this legal battle has been on both sides.

Here’s where it gets interesting: a judge already ruled that Baldoni would need to cover her legal bills after dismissing his defamation case, though Lively was turned down in her attempt to secure other damages. Now the court just needs to sign off on the final amount. The pair had originally settled their broader legal dispute in May—just before trial was set to begin on Lively’s own claims of breach of contract and retaliation—so this fee request represents the last major loose end in their years-long legal saga.

Lively originally claimed she’d lost millions as a result of an alleged smear campaign orchestrated by Baldoni and his team during the fallout from their film, and she also made allegations of sexual harassment. While most of those claims were ultimately dismissed, the breach of contract and retaliation claims did survive long enough to force a settlement. Now it’s just a matter of whether Baldoni and Wayfarer will actually cut that check.