A federal judge in Manhattan tossed the majority of claims in Blake Lively’s sweeping lawsuit against her former It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni in a Thursday (April 2) decision, dismissing all but a handful before jurors begin hearing about the highly contentious Hollywood dispute next month.
Judge Lewis Liman agreed with the majority of the arguments made by Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and others involved in the 2024 film in their motion for summary judgment. Jury selection for a trial on Lively’s remaining three claims out of a dozen, including retaliation, is slated to begin in Manhattan Federal Court on May 18.
Lively, 38, filed suit against Baldoni in December 2024, alleging she’d been subjected to sexual harassment and demeaning behaviour during filming and had fallen victim to a smear campaign for speaking out. The movie is based on a bestselling novel by American author Colleen Hoover about domestic violence.
The film studio had, in part, argued that Lively couldn’t sue for sexual harassment under Title V II of the Civil Rights Act because she was an independent contractor and not an employee. Liman agreed.
“The contract reflected nothing more than Lively’s commitment of the time necessary to film her scenes alongside other actors and the film’s crew. At any other point, she was free to accept additional work and to perform in other films. And she did so,” the judge wrote, noting Lively was shooting another project during post-production.
In one of her claims alleging a hostile work environment, the Gossip Girl actor had accused Baldoni of blindsiding her when he went off script filming one scene, kissing her on the head and rubbing his face and mouth on her neck. The judge’s Thursday opinion said there was “no question” the alleged conduct could support such a claim, but that it depended on the social context.
“And the question is whether in this context, Baldoni’s conduct could reasonably be understood to reflect a view about Lively as a woman rather than ‘the role (she was) asked to play,’” Liman wrote.
“Under this framing, it would be difficult to view Baldoni’s conduct as reflecting hostility or bias based on gender. He was acting in the scene. Assuming he was improvising, the conduct was not so far beyond what might reasonably be expected to take place between two characters during a slow dancing scene such that an inference of hostile treatment on the basis of sex would arise.”
Liman, however, will allow Lively’s lawyers to argue at trial that she was sexually harassed during filming to support her retaliation claims.
He referred to the allegation that Baldoni brazenly said, “Sorry, I missed the sexual harassment training,” after he was called out for commenting on Lively’s body as “pretty hot” in the wake of directing her to expose her bra.
Baldoni, 42, Lively’s co-star and the film’s director, had also told everyone on set one day that Lively had never watched pornography, which the judge said “bore no apparent connection to the creative process and singled Lively out in front of others in a way that could be interpreted as relating to sex and based on gender.”
Baldoni and the movie studio countersued Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, for defamation and other claims after she filed her case, which Liman dismissed last summer.
The Daily News reached out to lawyers for both sides for comment. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
