Justin Baldoni has declared that a “jury must decide” if The New York Times is off the hook for their involvement in his ongoing legal battle against Blake Lively.
“A pietistic bastion of the media establishment, the NYT has long presumed itself beyond accountability. Not here,” Baldoni, 41, stated in court documents filed on Friday, March 14, and obtained by Deadline, claiming that the newspaper “went past merely reporting” when publishing Lively’s December 2024 complaint against him and his Wayfarer production company.
Baldoni further alleged that The New York Times “actively vouched for the veracity of its false narrative” by publishing Lively’s complaint in full. (Baldoni starred in the August 2024 movie It Ends With Us alongside Lively. He also directed the film based on the book of the same name by Colleen Hoover.)
“The fair report privilege the NYT seeks to hide behind does not protect it from liability for maliciously colluding with Lively and her cohort to publish a false and defamatory hit piece about the Wayfarer Parties, wrongly casting them as villains and making them scapegoats for Lively’s well-publicized media missteps,” the court docs continue.
‘The New York Times’ Responds to Justin Baldoni’s Defamation Lawsuit
Us Weekly has reached out to Baldoni and Lively’s teams for comment.
Lively, 37, filed her complaint in December 2024, alleging that she was sexually harassed on the It Ends With Us set. She also claimed that Baldoni and his Wayfarer production company fostered a hostile work environment. The New York Times published Lively’s complaint in full after it was filed. (Baldoni has continued to deny these allegations.)
Baldoni went on to sue the newspaper for $250 million. The New York Times has since filed to dismiss the suit. Earlier this month, Judge Lewis J. Liman granted the newspaper giant’s request to pause the lawsuit while he reviews their motion to dismiss. Baldoni’s latest filing is in opposition to The New York Times’ request for dismissal.
“The press enjoys the fair report privilege when faithfully relaying the contents of a filed complaint,” the docs allege. “But that is not what the NYT did; it (admittedly) based its Article and Video on its reporters’ review of ‘thousands of page’ of documents and expressly credited Lively’s claims, framing them as having been verified by the NYT’s own investigation. In doing so, the NYT forfeited the fair report privilege.”
Blake Lively Officially Files Lawsuit Against ‘It Ends With Us’ Director Justin Baldoni
Baldoni alleged that the newspaper had “months of plotting” with Lively’s team while he and Wayfarer apparently only had “hours to respond” before the story went live on the paper’s website.
The New York Times has since responded in a statement to Us.
“The flaws in the Baldoni/Wayfarer case were made clear last week in their own legal filing when they asked the court for yet another opportunity to amend their complaint to try to make it legally sufficient,” the statement read. “We are looking forward to addressing the various problems in their latest brief when we file our reply later this week.”
Along with his suit against The New York Times, Baldoni has also sued Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and publicist Leslie Sloane for $400 million. (Sloane has since filed to be removed from the lawsuit. Lively and Reynolds have vehemently denied Baldoni’s accusations.)
They are set to face off in court starting March 2026.
