Justin Baldoni asks a judge to throw out Blake Lively's $8 million legal bill

The lawsuit is over. The invoice is not.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni settled their "It Ends With Us" case in May, weeks before it was due to go to trial, and everyone put out a statement about closure and moving forward in peace. Two months later they are fighting about a bill for $8,035,040.88.

Baldoni's side filed its answer to that bill on Monday. It is not a polite answer.

The number

Lively is asking Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios to cover $7,495,526.87 in attorneys' fees plus $539,514.01 in costs, per the breakdown reported by Just Jared and NBC News. She is not asking out of nowhere. Judge Lewis Liman ruled in June that she was entitled to her defense costs under the Protecting Survivors From Weaponized Defamation Lawsuits Act. The only open question is how much.

Baldoni's answer to how much: ideally zero, and if not zero, then something with a lot fewer digits.

The argument

In a filing obtained by TheWrap, Baldoni and Wayfarer called the request "anything but a typical fee motion," said Lively's lawyers billed "excessive" hourly rates, and asked Liman to deny the whole thing or "substantially reduce" it.

The overstaffing complaint is the part that will make anyone who has ever seen a law firm invoice nod slowly:

"The most cursory review of Lively's submission shows multiple lawyers at the same hearings, numerous charges for lawyers conferencing, conferring, or strategizing with one another, and to put it mildly, extremely excessive research and online investigation."

Over 7,000 billable hours, according to the filing. The $539,514.01 in costs got labeled "whopping."

Then comes the comparison Baldoni's team clearly likes best. The New York Times, which was also sued and also got a defamation claim tossed, asked for $181,622.70. Baldoni's filing wants that number used as the yardstick:

"At minimum, the Court should substantially reduce the request, using as a benchmark the $181,622.70 the Times sought after securing dismissal of Count II on its separate motion to dismiss, the same outcome Lively achieved."

Baldoni attorney Bryan Freedman went further, telling Just Jared that "Lively's fee request is so over-inclusive that it sweeps in fees for researching her own liability for perjury arising from her California CRD claim and her Rule 11 motion for which the Court has already denied fees!" That is Freedman's characterization of the billing records, not a finding by the court, and Lively's team has not answered it publicly. A representative for Lively did not immediately respond to TheWrap's request for comment.

How we got to a fight about receipts

Quick refresher, because this case has more chapters than the book.

• December 2024: Lively sues, alleging sexual harassment on the "It Ends With Us" set and a retaliatory smear campaign run by Baldoni's publicists. The New York Times publishes the complaint.
• Then: Baldoni countersues Lively, Ryan Reynolds and others for $400 million. A judge dismisses that case in June 2025.
• This year: Liman tosses 10 of the 13 claims in Lively's suit, citing insufficient evidence.
• May 2026: The two sides settle, weeks before trial, with a joint statement about pride in the movie and hope for "a respectful environment online."
• June 2026: Liman rules Lively is entitled to fees.
• Now: They are arguing about whether 7,000 hours of lawyering was strictly necessary.

The "respectful environment online" held for about eight weeks, which is roughly eight weeks longer than most people expected.

What happens next

Liman decides. He can grant the $8 million, deny it outright, or land somewhere between the six figures Baldoni is pitching and the eight Lively is asking for. Fee fights usually end in the middle, and the middle here is still a very large number.

Baldoni, for what it is worth, spoke publicly about the case for the first time in nearly two years only last week. He picked a lively moment to start talking.