Justin Baldoni’s defamation claim against co-star Blake Lively and his libel lawsuit against The New York Times have officially been thrown out.
According to legal documents obtained by TMZ on Friday, the “It Ends With Us” director and star missed the deadline to appeal Judge Lewis Liman’s earlier dismissal of the multimillion lawsuits.
The New York judge in June tossed both Baldoni’s $400 million suit against Lively, husband Ryan Reynolds and publicist Leslie Sloane, as well as his $250 million filing against The Times for its December exposé titled, “‘We Can Bury Anyone:’ Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”
Lively at the time accused Baldoni of having sexually harassed her on the set of their film and of waging a retaliatory PR campaign. Baldoni responded by filing a countersuit alleging defamation, in addition to his suit against The Times for its coverage of Lively’s claims.
Baldoni’s filing against The Times asserted the deep-dive was “rife with inaccuracies [and] misrepresentations,” which drew significantly from Lively’s “self-serving narrative.” He accused the paper of relying on “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
However, Liman found that Lively was not liable for her claims because the allegations originated in a civil rights complaint. The New York Times, having based its story on Lively’s initial complaint, was also not liable, he ruled.
Reynolds was similarly found not liable for having dubbed Baldoni a “sexual predator,” as that statement was consistent with his wife’s recollection of events, which he’d have no reason to have called into question.
Last month, in the wake of the dismissals, Lively filed a motion seeking millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees and damages to “remedy the substantial harm” that resulted from Baldoni’s “baseless” suit.
Baldoni continues to deny all of the allegations in Lively’s claim, which is still active and scheduled to go to trial in March.
