Justin Baldoni's attorneys have fired back at Blake Lively's request for $8.3 million in legal fees, filing a formal opposition in federal court that calls her billing records "extremely overinclusive," padded with vague entries, and stuffed with charges for work that had nothing to do with the one claim she actually won.
The filing, submitted in the New York court of Judge Lewis J. Liman, asks the judge to deny the fee request entirely, or, at a minimum, slash it down to something closer to the $181,622.70 that the New York Times sought after winning dismissal of a related claim. That benchmark figure is roughly forty-five times smaller than what Lively's team is demanding.
The dispute marks what may be the final chapter of a legal saga that began in December 2024, when Lively sued Baldoni, her co-star and director on the 2024 film It Ends With Us, alleging sexual harassment, retaliation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The case ballooned into dueling lawsuits, tabloid spectacle, and months of competing public narratives. Now it has come down to a billing fight. And the numbers Baldoni's lawyers have put before the court tell a story of their own.
Lively's fee request, filed earlier this month, draws from two law firms: Wilkie, Farr & Gallagher, which billed $4,544,094, and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, which billed $2,951,432. An additional roughly $300,000 in costs related to a June 1st hearing brings the total to $8.3 million. Eighty-two people appear on the billing schedules, as the Daily Mail reported.
Baldoni's lawyer Ellyn Garofalo did not mince words in the filing.
"The most cursory review of Lively's submission shows multiple lawyers at the same hearings, numerous charges for lawyers conferencing, conferring, or strategizing with one another, and to put it mildly, extremely excessive research and online investigation."
The opposition brief singles out specific billing entries to make the case. On January 21, three of Lively's attorneys, Kareem Salem, Matthew Bruno, and Amy Drlov, each billed independently for the same meeting. Salem charged $537.75 for half an hour. Bruno billed $504 for half an hour. Drlov billed $337.80 for twenty minutes. Three lawyers, one meeting, nearly $1,400.
Then there is the entry for attorney Esra Hudson, who on February 4 billed ten hours and $11,610 for traveling from New York to Los Angeles and performing "social media commentary" and calls with unidentified people. Baldoni's team flagged 47.5 hours and $55,145.30 in travel-related entries they argue have no connection to any identified court proceeding.
Beyond the specific examples, Baldoni's attorneys identified a systemic issue in Lively's billing records: 319.5 hours of billed time totaling $361,403.50 that referenced vague "XX" meetings without identifying the actual meeting, hearing, deposition, or event.
Garofalo's filing put it bluntly:
"Ms Lively's request depends on categories of work that are unsupported, unallocated, redacted, vague, clerical, collateral, or facially connected to matters other than the defense of the defamation claim."
The filing also challenges the hourly rate of Lively's lead attorney, Michael Gottlieb, who told the court he normally charges $2,795 an hour but gave Lively a "discounted" rate of $2,187. At that rate, Gottlieb billed 224 hours totaling $457,000. Garofalo argued he should be paid $1,677.90 an hour, still a substantial figure, but one that would cut his total by more than a quarter.
On top of the attorney fees, Lively sought $539,514.01 in costs and expenses. Baldoni's team described that figure as lacking evidence to substantiate the charges or connect them to work covered by the applicable statute.
Understanding the fee fight requires understanding how the underlying case played out. And for Lively, the scorecard is mixed at best.
Lively filed thirteen claims in her initial lawsuit. In April, Judge Liman threw out ten of them, including every claim against Baldoni personally. The sexual harassment allegations, conspiracy claims, and defamation charges were all dismissed. The three remaining claims, retaliation and breach of contract against Baldoni's studio and production company, were settled without payment two weeks before a projected May 18 trial date.
Meanwhile, Baldoni had filed a $400 million countersuit naming Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and her publicist Leslie Sloane, citing a New York Times report he claimed was defamatory. That suit was dismissed. Judge Liman then ruled that Lively could seek legal fees related solely to defending against Baldoni's countersuit, under California Civil Code Section 47.1.
As Fox News reported, Baldoni's attorney Bryan Freedman framed the outcome in stark terms after the fee ruling came down: "Ms. Lively was only awarded limited attorney fees for a single claim as part of a case that lasted only a matter of months, nothing more. There was no sexual harassment. There was no retaliation. There was no smear campaign."
Lively's legal team offered a different reading. Attorneys Gottlieb and Hudson said the ruling "makes it clear that Ms. Lively brought her claims in good faith, that there was no evidence she acted with malice, and that she is the prevailing defendant," as the AP reported.
The core legal question now before Judge Liman is not whether Lively gets fees, he already ruled she can, but how much. And the two sides are miles apart on what counts.
Baldoni's attorneys argue that Lively's fee recovery is limited to work defending against his defamation countersuit. Nothing more. They contend that Lively "broadly construes Section 47.1" to sweep in fees connected to Wayfarer Studios' eight non-defamation claims and Lively's own fifteen affirmative claims, which her team characterized as "inextricably intertwined."
The filing rejects that framing head-on:
"Lively does not provide billing statements or other records to support her $7.5 million demand, much less allocate fees to her defense of Wayfarer's defamation claim."
Baldoni's lawyers went further, noting that the fee request was "so over-inclusive that it sweeps in fees for researching her own liability for perjury arising from her California CRD claim and her Rule 11 motion for which the court has already denied fees."
In other words, Lively's team billed for work on matters she lost, and for a motion the court already rejected, and included those hours in the total she wants Baldoni to pay.
The filing's bottom line was unambiguous:
"In sum, Lively fails to meet her burden to present credible evidence showing that the fees and costs she seeks to recover are reasonable and, accordingly, her fee motion should be denied in its entirety."
An insider close to Lively pushed back through TMZ, arguing that Baldoni's team was misreading the statute. The source said Baldoni's lawyers were "saying that the defamation claim is the only actionable item in the case," which "contradicts statutory language which states 'successful defense of the litigation' not the 'claim' and they don't deal with that at all in their opposition, because they know they're wrong."
That statutory interpretation question, whether Section 47.1 covers fees for defending the entire litigation or only the specific defamation claim, will likely determine whether Lively walks away with millions or a fraction of what she requested.
Breitbart noted that both sides had claimed victory after Judge Liman's earlier ruling on fee eligibility, with Freedman emphasizing that Lively "once again, she failed" in her bid for punitive and triple damages.
The film at the center of all this, It Ends With Us, based on Colleen Hoover's 2016 novel, earned $148 million domestically and $350 million worldwide. The legal fees Lively is seeking now represent a significant fraction of what a mid-budget film might cost to produce.
Baldoni, 42, broke his public silence last week in an Instagram video alongside his wife Emily. He spoke about the toll the ordeal has taken. "If you've ever been through something traumatic, you know that healing isn't linear," he said. "It looks different every day, and we have had to rethink for ourselves what is real and what matters and it's this, it's our family, it's our friends, it's our community (who) have been there for us, it's our faith."
Whatever Judge Liman decides, the record in this case tells a clear story. Ten of thirteen claims dismissed. A settlement with no payment. A countersuit thrown out. And now, a fee request that even a sympathetic reading would have to call aggressive, eighty-two billers, vague entries worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a lead attorney charging over $2,000 an hour at a "discount."
When the dust settles, someone will have to explain how defending against a lawsuit that lasted "only a matter of months" generated $8.3 million in legal bills. That is a question the court should answer, and one the legal profession might want to sit with, too.
