\n<\/p>\n
Blake Lively has been awarded more than $400,000 in attorneys\u2019 fees after her 18-month legal battle with Justin Baldoni.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, judge Lewis Liman awarded the actor $363,245.40 in attorneys\u2019 fees and $44,206.35 in costs, figures far lower than the $8m Lively had sought.<\/p>\n
In a ruling, the judge found that Lively was entitled to only \u201creasonable\u201d fees. He found that her lawyers\u2019 billing rates were \u201cnot unreasonable\u201d in a case of this complexity, but \u201cthe number of hours for which Lively seeks reimbursement is unreasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liman added that her documentation was incomplete: \u201cLively has submitted the declaration of a purported attorney fee expert who has reviewed the billing records [\u2026] Lively has not submitted the invoices themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
In December 2024, Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and fostering a hostile work environment on the set of domestic abuse drama It Ends With Us; the director filed a counter-defamation lawsuit against Lively the following month.<\/p>\n
In May, they settled their dispute just weeks before it went to trial, with only the issue of attorneys\u2019 fees and costs remaining. Today\u2019s ruling draws a line under their long legal battle.<\/p>\n
In July, Baldoni and his wife, Emily, spoke out about the \u201cinjustice and pain\u201d they said they had endured as part of the legal battle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had to wrestle with so many things and try to understand so many things,\u201d said Emily in a video posted to Instagram. \u201cLike, how could something like this even happen? Let alone disguised as a fight for women.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lively has made high-profile appearances at the Met Gala and at the World Cup final after the settlement but has yet to speak publicly about the legal battle. Last month, she was absent at Taylor Swift\u2019s wedding amid reports that the pair\u2019s friendship had fractured after the singer was subpoenaed by Baldoni\u2019s legal team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blake Lively has been awarded more than $400,000 in attorneys\u2019 fees after her 18-month legal battle with Justin Baldoni. On Wednesday, judge Lewis Liman awarded the actor $363,245.40 in attorneys\u2019 fees and $44,206.35 in costs, figures far lower than the $8m Lively had sought. In a ruling, the judge found that Lively was entitled to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[2483,9872,11169,1844,3630,675,3442,324,19101],"class_list":{"0":"post-51969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-awards","9":"tag-baldoni","10":"tag-blake","11":"tag-case","12":"tag-fees","13":"tag-judge","14":"tag-justin","15":"tag-legal","16":"tag-lively"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}