Justin Baldoni has stated that a jury will need to determine if The New York Times bears any responsibility in his ongoing legal dispute with Blake Lively.
In court documents filed on Friday, March 14, Baldoni, 41, criticized the NYT as a self-righteous pillar of the media world that has historically evaded consequences. He accused the newspaper of overstepping its boundaries by not just reporting on Lively’s complaint against him and his Wayfarer production company in December 2024, but by endorsing its accuracy.
Baldoni argued that The New York Times took an active role in perpetuating a false narrative by fully publishing Lively’s complaint against him. (Baldoni co-starred with Lively in the August 2024 film It Ends With Us and also directed the movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover‘s novel of the same title.)
“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.
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.”
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.
