Blake Lively awarded $400,000 of $8m she claimed for legal fees in Justin Baldoni battle

Actress Blake Lively has been awarded $400,000 (£340,000) of the $8m (£6.9m) she tried to claim from her former co-star Justin Baldoni to cover her legal fees and costs to fight a defamation case he brought. Lively initially sued Baldoni, her co-star and director of the 2024 film It Ends With Us for sexual harassment and retaliation, before he countersued for defamation. A judge dismissed his defamation complaint in 2025, and she argued she was entitled to $7.5m (£6.4m) to cover her lawyers' fees and $540,000 (£460,000) for other costs. But the judge said she should receive considerably less - a total of $407,451 - because she requested money for more people and time than were necessary to defend the defamation claim. She should not have claimed money for other "intertwined" costs to do with the wider legal battle, and took a "blunderbuss approach" to calculating how many hours of lawyers' time she could claim for, the judge said. Baldoni denied harassing Lively or orchestrating a smear campaign against her. Earlier this year, the judge dismissed parts of Lively's lawsuit against him including the sexual harassment element. The following month, the pair agreed a settlement to end t