Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are still heading to trial on the It Ends With Us actress’ retaliation and defamation claims despite a federal judge’s best intentions and persuasion efforts today.
Lawyers for the former and bitterly battling co-stars were ordered to call in with Magistrate Judge Sarah L. Cave.Monday afternoon to find out what “their client’s updated settlement position” were.
It did not go well.
Coming just days after Judge Lewis Liman dropped 10 of Lively’s 13 claims against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios execs and PR team, the individual conference calls (3 pm ET for Team Blake, 4 pm ET for Team Baldoni) saw both sides reject any deal to avert the May 18 trial. Judge Cave searched for any common ground between Lively and Baldoni that she could build on to no avail, I hear.
With her sexual harassment claims tossed not on their merits but on jurisdictional and contractual grounds, Lively certainly took a loss on April 2 with Judge Liman’s summery judgement ruling trimming her case. Allegations of a preemptive online smear campaign by Baldoni’s Crisis PR crew against Lively ahead of the premiere of the Sony distributed IEWU are now the battlefield of the matter. Lively has said in recent days, the astroturfing claim was always the real case.
Perhaps as an indication of where the settlement calls were going to end up, earlier Monday, Lively reposted her strongly worded remarks of last week asking fans to not be “distracted by the digital soap opera” and vowing to “never stop doing my part in fighting to expose the systems and people who seek to harm, shame, silence and retaliate against victims.”
Neither reps for either Lively and Baldoni responded to Deadline’s request for comment on today’s settlement calls or there outcome.
Monday was far from the first time there were moves to get Lively and Baldoni to solve the December 2024 instigated legal matter without the drama of a trial.
Late last year, Judge Liman ordered both parties to engage in settlement talks.
There were a number of meetings, including Lively and Baldoni meeting face-to-face in a Manhattan courtroom a couple months ago. Like today, it didn’t go well. In February, Baldoni attorney Bryan Freedman said that, despite all the nudging and high hopes, attempts to reach a deal proved “unsuccessful.”
In that sense, today was déjà vu.