Justin Baldoni has filed a whopping $250 million USD ($402 million AUD) lawsuit against The New York Times for its reporting on Blake Lively‘s legal complaint.
The lawsuit, which has been filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, accuses the publication of teaming up with Lively’s public relations team to push an “unverified and self-serving narrative”.
The lawsuit comes just over a week after Lively filed her own legal complaint, accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign against her.
The 87-page complaint includes claims that Lively’s team had been engaging in their own PR war against Baldoni and claims The New York Times omitted context which would change the meaning of certain examples outlined in the initial legal complaint.
Baldoni is one of the 10 plaintiffs lodging the lawsuit alongside publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel who are suing the publication for libel and false light invasion of privacy.
The countersuit includes It Ends With Us producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz who claim the article “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman told Variety that The Times “cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative”.
After news of Lively’s legal complaint began to circulate, one of the biggest alleged examples of the smear campaign was a text exchange between Abel and Nathan in which they appeared to be praising each other for a news story about Lively’s “tone deaf” promotion of It Ends With Us and uncovering embarrassing interviews from her past.
“You really outdid yourself with this piece,” Abel wrote.
“That’s why you hired me right? I’m the best,” Nathan replied.
However, Baldoni’s filing claims that The Times left out a text Nathan sent before this exchange which added needed context: “Damn this is unfair because it’s also not me”.
The suit also alleges that Baldoni and his team never saw the itemised requirements made by Lively about on-set conduct following a sit-down meeting on January 4, 2024.
According to the suit, The Times article was skewed to Lively’s experience.
“The Times story relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives,” it says, per Variety.
Blake Lively files new lawsuit against Justin Baldoni
Shortly after Baldoni’s lawsuit, Lively made her legal complaint official, suing him and others for “mental pain, anguish, severe emotional distress and lost wages” in the Federal Court of New York. Previously, The New York Times reported that Lively’s legal complaint filed in California was a precursor to a lawsuit.
The lawsuit sues Baldoni, Melissa Nathan, and Jennifer Abel along with the production company behind It Ends With Us Wayfarer Studios.
