A court on Friday ordered Justin Baldoni to pay Blake Lively's legal fees in the It Ends With Us lawsuit, but it rejected her bid for damages and shut down her last chance at a payout in the case. The ruling leaves Lively with a fee award and nothing more.
That is the immediate answer to a question that has hung over the dispute since last month, when the settlement was announced: whether Lively would still come away with money beyond costs. Her legal team had argued that a California law aimed at protecting sexual harassment victims would let her recover damages and legal fees, but U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman said the law does not create an end run around the federal rules that govern litigation.
Liman wrote that the statute makes only a narrow exception to the usual process and that compensatory and punitive damages do not fit within it. In plain terms, the court agreed that Baldoni must cover Lively's legal bills, but it refused to turn that law into a vehicle for a broader award. For Lively, the decision matters because her side had treated the claim as the remaining path to a payout after her core sexual harassment allegation was dismissed earlier in the case.
That is why the Friday ruling landed so hard. Lively's team had three claims left and centered on the one tied to California law, while Baldoni's lawyers had stressed that the deal involved no monetary payout to her. Michael Gottlieb called the preservation of the claim a "core issue" after the settlement was reached, and Bryan Freedman pushed the other way, saying Lively should have gone to trial if the case was as strong as her team suggested.
Freedman also said the fee fight was standard and mocked the idea that a no-money settlement could be spun as a win. Lively's spokesperson called Friday's decision procedural, but the practical result is more concrete than that description suggests: Baldoni has been ordered to pay her fees, yet the damages door is closed. What remains unresolved is the size of the fee bill, which the court did not state, even as the larger dispute over money has effectively ended.
The case began in 2024, when Lively accused Baldoni and Wayfarer of marshaling a plan to undermine her reputation after she spoke up about misconduct on the set of It Ends With Us. Friday's ruling does not revisit those accusations; it narrows the fight to what the court will and will not award. For now, the answer is simple: fees for Lively, no damages, and no payout beyond that.
