A judge has granted to pause Justin Baldoni’s $250 million lawsuit against The New York Times.
Judge Lewis J. Liman granted The New York Times’ request to stay discovery on Tuesday, March 4, according to documents. During this period, the judge will review the newspaper’s motion to be dismissed from the lawsuit.
“The Wayfarer Parties are unlikely to be unfairly prejudiced by a stay while the Court decides the pending motion,” the federal judge wrote of Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, its CEO, financier Steve Sorowitz, and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel in a brisk five-page order obtained by Deadline on Tuesday.
“The NY Times did not delay filing its motion; it filed the motion within 21 days of being served,” he added, per the outlet. “The Court intends to address the motion to dismiss promptly after it is fully submitted. To the extent that the Wayfarer Parties are concerned about delay, they have it within their power to accelerate their contemplated further amended complaint or their opposition to the motion to dismiss. The Wayfarer Parties themselves suggest that discovery from the NY Times is unlikely to be voluminous.”
The New York Times Files to Dismiss Justin Baldoni’s $250 Million Lawsuit
Following the judge’s decision, a spokesperson for The New York Times addressed the paper’s small legal victory.
“We appreciate the court’s decision today, which recognizes the important First Amendment values at stake here,” a New York Times spokesperson said in a statement to Us Weekly on Tuesday. “The court has stopped Mr. Baldoni from burdening The Times with discovery requests in a case that should never have been brought.”
Us has reached out to Baldoni for comment.
The judge’s decision comes four days after The New York Times filed a motion asking to be removed from the lawsuit. The outlet also defended its reporting of Blake Lively’s accusations against Baldoni, 40, on the set of It Ends With Us.
“As our motion shows, this case should never have been brought against The New York Times,” a spokesperson told Us on Friday, February 28. “Blake Lively raised serious concerns about the way she was treated on the set and after the movie’s release. We did exactly what news organizations should do: we informed the public of the complaint she filed with the California Civil Rights Department. Mr. Baldoni’s misbegotten campaign against The Times — questioning our ethics, attempting to discredit our reporting, filing a baseless lawsuit — will not silence us.”
In December 2024, The New York Times published a story where Lively, 37, accused her It Ends With Us director and costar of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign against her. (Following the New York Times story, Lively sued Baldoni for sexual harassment and retaliation.)
Baldoni denied the allegations and subsequently sued The New York Times, claiming that the media company “cherry-picked” communications and omitted context which allegedly misled readers in its article “We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”
‘The New York Times’ Responds to Justin Baldoni’s Defamation Lawsuit
At the time, a New York Times spokesperson stood by its story, telling Us in a statement that the outlet planned to “vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
“The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead,” the statement read. “Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. Those texts and emails were also the crux of a discrimination claim filed in California by Blake Lively against Justin Baldoni and his associates.”
Baldoni also filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit against Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and Lively’s publicist Leslie Sloane. Slone, for her part, has filed a motion to remove herself from the lawsuit.
