Judge Responds Strongly During Blake Lively Attorney Fee Court Dispute

Ajouté : 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Okay, so listen. Blake Lively just got humiliated one more time as the judge has denied her desperate request to cover her skyrocketing attorney fees.

[00:00:09]Not only that, but reports suggest the judge took this decision by getting furious over the fact that Blake issued a shocking threat over her unpaid attorney fees. Bad decisions that Blake and Ryan got charged a lot of money.

[00:00:23]>> The judge just ruled that he doesn't want to see any more evidence or he doesn't want to hear any more arguments from Blake Lively on how she should recover these attorneys fees from Justin Baldoni and the Wafer parties. It's pretty obvious where he stands at this.

[00:00:42]The tables have completely turned on the story and I mean completely. While Blake Lively was out there playing the victim card on red carpets, she was also doing something that finally pushed a federal judge over the edge. Not just losing the lawsuit, but pressuring other women involved in the case to try and force them to pay her legal bills. Think about that for a second. The woman who claimed to be standing up for survivors was using the legal system to bully regular people who didn't have her money or her power or her famous husband. She was threatening public relations executives, witnesses, anyone who got in her way.

[00:01:16]All in this desperate attempt to make somebody else pay for the massive legal bills she had racked up trying to destroy a man who simply wouldn't give her what she wanted.

[00:01:25]>> But when you want to parade around and and call a lawsuit a victory, this is this this this is this is your attempt to do so. It seems like more nonsense from Miss The fight between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni burned $60 million in combined legal fees. That is not chump change even for Hollywood standards. It is an absolutely massive amount of money being poured into a legal battle that a federal judge had already told her she was losing. That is insane when you really think about it. She was spending this kind of money not to win, but just to fight and refuse to admit that maybe she was in the wrong. For over a year, Judge Lewis Lyman in New York was forced to deal with a towering mountain of filings, claims, counterclaims, and petty disputes that just kept coming and coming. Now, here's the thing. A settlement was eventually reached, which dropped the main case just days before it was set to go to a trial. The case was basically over for Blake and her team. Most people would have taken that as a win, or at least accepted it as the end and moved on with their lives. But, she refused to let the matter rest. Even after the case was settled, she continued pursuing attorney fees from Justin, his production company, Wayfarer Studios, and various public relations professionals involved in the case. She wanted to recoup all that money she had spent. And, this obsessive pursuit of money is what finally pushed the judge over the edge. Too much money and your lawyers just keep charging, you're not really paying attention. And then, suddenly you realize, "Oh, wait. Those lawyers were actually doing really [laughter] terrible things." The exhausted and furious judge told Blake Lively's legal team to just relax. He informed them that he did not need any additional information or late-night letters before making his final decision. The court was quite furious at the constant late-night filings and the weaponization of the judicial docket for what was clearly a personal vendetta.

[00:03:20]These weren't legitimate legal filings.

[00:03:23]These were moves designed to exhaust and bother the other side, and the judge saw it. I mean, these filings showed the sheer unprofessionalism of what Blake Lively's team was doing. In one instance, her opposition to a motion was filed extremely late on the East Coast, like 11:00 p.m. at night. A move that would normally get a junior lawyer fired at most firms because it's the kind of thing that looks desperate and shady.

[00:03:47]Yet, here it was being used as a pressure tactic. The filings were often 72 pages long, heavily redacted to hide the truth, and shockingly only devoted four pages to the actual claims. The rest was just filler, just legal warfare, just paper designed to overwhelm and exhaust Justin's lawyers.

[00:04:06]And for me, the fact that only four pages were about the actual claims proves that the entire lawsuit was really just a smoke act screen for revenge. It was never about justice. It was never about what happened on that set. It was about hurting someone who had said no to follow her demands. But, it wasn't just the judge who was facing the heat from Dear Blake. She was also asking other women involved in the case to secure her attorney fees. And that is what really crossed a line that the judge simply would not tolerate. The situation escalated when she began directing threats at other women involved in the case. Whether it was asking opposing female public relations executives for financial ruin or demanding that female witnesses bend to her opinion, her aggressive tactics her legal bills crossed the line into something that was no longer about getting justice. It was about using her wealth and her lawyers as weapons against people who couldn't afford to fight back.

[00:05:00]>> The way is Blake thinking by any chance that if she is successful in 47:1 that all of her legal fees, all $70 million or whatever it was for all and he only dismissed the Bell Don Think about that for a second. She was out there in the press talking about how she was this brave survivor who was standing up to a powerful man, but behind the scenes, she was looking to financially ruin female public relations executives and demanding that female witnesses change their stories to match her claims. That is the opposite of what a survivor does.

[00:05:36]The pattern of late-night filings wasn't accidental, either. It was a strategy.

[00:05:42]Filing documents at 11:00 p.m. on the East Coast meant opposing counsel had less time to respond before morning deadlines. 72-page documents heavily redacted meant hiding information while consuming enormous amounts of time to review, and the judge saw right through it. He recognized how she was trying to make the procedure expensive and painful for the other side that they would just give up and pay her bills. But, here's the thing about the strategy. It only works if the other side doesn't have the resources to fight back. And in this case, our boy Justin had everything.

[00:06:16]>> of this case from being a sage.

[00:06:18]They're calling the 47.1 the core issue of The main idea of Blake Lively's legal strategy to recover these massive fees relied on fresh California state law known as Civil Code Section 47.1.

[00:06:32]This law, also known as California's Protecting Survivors from Weaponized Defamation Lawsuits Act, was created in 2023 as a direct result of the Me Too movement. And I want to be really clear about what this law was designed to do because its noble purpose is to protect real victims from being sued for defamation when they bravely speak out about other people. It was meant to help someone who had been actually hurt, silenced, and who needed legal protection to come forward and tell their story without being bankrupted by their opponent filing a bunch of retaliatory lawsuits. The law allows these genuine victims to recover their attorney fees, trouble damages, and punitive damages if their opponent files a retaliatory lawsuit against them. And Blake Lively tried to use this specific law to force Justin Baldoni to pay her legal bills. She argued that his $400 million countersuit was a retaliatory action against her for speaking up about workplace issues. Now, the irony here is just very clear, and once you see it, you can't ignore it. First, the original claims were baseless. The court previously dismissed 10 of her 13 claims while removing Justin from that part of the lawsuit. The incident she claimed, such as Justin entering her trailer, were revealed to be situations where she had actually texted him and invited him inside. The fact that she tried to frame an invited interaction as wrongdoing destroyed her credibility completely.

[00:07:58]Second, she tried to use a California state law in a New York federal court for a movie that was primarily filmed in New Jersey. This form shopping showed that her legal team was desperately looking to find any legal loophole.

[00:08:11]Third, the strategy expanded far beyond Justin Baldoni. Blake took this exact same strategy to Texas, filing a separate motion seeking nearly $800,000 in attorney fees from Judd Wallace, a public relations consultant associated with Justin Baldoni. She once again cited the California 47.1 law, claiming that Wallace's lawsuit was retaliatory, even though the case was in Texas and the parties were not in California at all. I think by now it's pretty obvious that she was trying to use California law in Texas for a case she originally claimed belonged in New York. It was a desperate grab for any law that might force someone else to pay her bills. She was taking a law designed to protect actual folks, and she was using it to try to bleed an independent filmmaker dry. That is what she was doing, and that is the actual truth. But her legal tactics weren't her only approach. She also brought in serious firepower to manage the crisis, because at this point she realized that normal celebrity public relations tactics weren't going to save her reputation. Enter Nick Shapiro, who handles PR for Lively's camp. He jumped in at that point of the conversation with the political argument.

[00:09:23]"Consider the optics," he said. "What if Baldoni, the self-stylized male feminist, became the man who helped strip legal protections from women who report mis to handle the massive fallout. She brought in high-level crisis managers, including Nick Shapiro.

[00:09:40]Now, you can Google his background, but the thing is Nick Shapiro resurfaced to give statements to the Puck publication.

[00:09:46]And his primary argument was that if Justin won the legal fees battle, he would be stripping legal protections from real victims. By framing Blake Lively's personal financial fight as a global crusade for all women, her team was trying to guilt-trip the public and the judge into taking her side. But the thing is, Blake is a multimillionaire who falsified at least 15 incidents in New York Times article and used a law meant for innocent people to try to create problems for an independent filmmaker. And this whole thing did not stop with Shapiro. The wider PR machine, including Lizzie Slone, engaged in a massive effort to control the story.

[00:10:24]When her crisis team was working overtime in New York, her husband was somewhere else. And I think this is one of the most chilling parts of the whole story. Throughout the filming and early promotion of It Ends with Us, Ryan rewrote scripts. He controlled promotional material through his company, Maximum Effort. He participated in the planned campaign against Justin.

[00:10:45]He even brought in major comedians to push his narrative without them realizing the true context of what they were helping with. The man was in the trenches. He was using all of his power, connections, and his industry leverage to help his wife destroy this guy. That was Ryan Reynolds in 2024 and early 2025. But then when the truth came out and the evidence became public, Ryan was gone. Nowhere to be found. During the exact window when this legal settlement was finalized and Blake Lively was forced to walk the Met Gala red carpet alone to face the music, Ryan was in Bermuda. He was there supporting his sailing team for the Sail GP Pro circuit. He was watching boat races on a beautiful tropical island while his wife's reputation was burning to the ground. That's quite a valid move. I mean, a very sensible decision, which is watching boat races instead of listening to his wife's yapping in those red carpet interviews. I can understand why he chose the ocean over his wife. That is the decision he made and it says everything about who they really are as a couple. This absence highlights a deep hypocrisy in how Hollywood couples operate. In the past, Blake and Ryan used paparazzi to control their image, press to build their brand, and even went so far as to have a Canadian photographer arrested and jailed, ruining his life simply because Ryan was unhappy with a photo taken on a public movie set. How was the movie, Ryan?

[00:12:17]But when the press turns on them to report the truth of their legal failures, when the cameras are capturing the real story instead of the manufactured one, Ryan runs away to Bermuda. He leaves his wife to take the full force of the public backlash entirely alone, and that exposes the selfish reality behind their whole perfect marriage facade. The fact that this Hollywood power couple could not even stand together during their biggest crisis speaks volumes about the reality of their relationship. It speaks volumes about who he is and who she is and what they actually think of each other when the cameras aren't rolling. But the absence of her husband wasn't the only thing that showed who she really was.

[00:12:56]There is also what she did to a legitimate women's charity. And that story is genuinely one of the most unexpected things I've ever seen in this whole mess. To understand the story behind this made-up campaign against Justin Baldoni, y'all must look closely at the events surrounding the Vital Voices Global Partnership. Vital Voices is an international nonprofit organization focused on women's empowerment. On December 9th, 2024, the organization awarded Justin the prestigious Voices of Solidarity Award, honoring him for his long-standing courage and compassion in advocating on behalf of women and girls. However, almost immediately after Justin received this major award, Blake filed her formal legal complaint with the California Civil Rights Department accusing Justin Baldoni of a lot of things. And then within 2 weeks, Vital Voices publicly released a statement revoking Justin Baldon's award. Now, later on, it was discovered that Blake Lively follows the Vital Voices organization on Instagram.

[00:13:59]And according to me, her powerful Hollywood connections probably used a women's charity to execute this whole thing. They waited patiently for Justin to receive the highest honor possible and then dropped a fabricated lawsuit perfectly timed to force the charity to publicly humiliate him on a global stage. This is the kind of thing that makes me angry. And this whole calculation became more obvious at the Met Gala because that's where all of these pieces of her personality came together in this perfect tone-deaf moment. I do, so I just like to like >> the kids right.

[00:14:32]>> have my kids with me. They're like, I probably could have fit them under my dress. A few hours after the lawsuit was finally settled, Blake Lively made a highly publicized appearance at the Met Gala. If I was in her place, I might have taken some time away from the spotlight after settling a humiliating legal battle that exposed her real behavior. But Blake is not a normal person. She used this popular fashion event to push her personal brand and act as if nothing was wrong at all.

[00:14:59]>> And my kids each painted a painting, a watercolor painting. So each of my four kids During red carpet interviews, she said her team was creating a custom framed art concept as she came up with this brilliant idea to feature her own children's watercolor paintings on the back. Instead, she presented it as this priceless personal artifact of motherhood. Like it was this moment of creative genius that just came to her right there on the red carpet. But the reality was quickly exposed and it was not the story she told. First of all, the bag was not a unique piece of motherly love. Judith Leiber has actually been doing these specific children's art custom bags for wealthy clients for over a decade. This is something you can order if you have enough money. Also, after Blake Lively paraded the bag on the red carpet, the designer began selling a custom version of it to the general public for $10,000.

[00:15:55]This massive PR push was tone-deaf to normal consumers. Blake was trying to use her children's simple artwork to sell a $10,000 luxury accessory while claiming she was a victim of financial and emotional distress in federal court.

[00:16:10]She was racking up legal bills of two to five million dollars per month. She was asking other women to try to get them to pay her legal fees. And then she was standing on a red carpet crying poor while holding a diamond-encrusted purse worth more than most people's cars. No matter how Blake inserts herself into things, a director's film, the Met Gala, she leaves an icky res- The most important part of this entire story is what happened in the settlement negotiations because this is where the truth finally won. And it happened in a way that nobody was expecting. So Blake and Ryan desperately sought a settlement to protect their image. They wanted this whole thing to be over, but they had one absolute non-negotiable demand. The couple begged for a settlement where both parties would sign a strict non-disclosure agreement. They wanted to ensure that Justin would never be allowed to discuss this incident publicly again. But this is where Justin Baldoni and his wife Emily drew a hard line in the sand. Insider information reveals that Justin and his wife rejected their demand and claimed no deal unless the NDA is gone. stepped up and said, "No way. We've seen that in text messages." And that makes me believe that Emily has been a lot more involved in actually pushing back at Blake. Justin definitely did not want to be silenced about the situations he had been put through for the last 2 years.

[00:17:34]And his wife, Emily, played a major role in pushing back, refusing to let her husband be pushed into submission by Hollywood elites. Now, according to my analysis, Blake Lively was completely trapped. She was terrified to testify at trial because she knew she would be exposed for perjury and evidence tampering, but Wayfarer Studios and Justin held all the leverage. They agreed to let her drop her remaining claims, but only if the NDA was completely removed from the settlement contract. Eventually, she was forced to settle her own lawsuit. No money changed hands in the agreement, and there was no admission of guilt. But the most important clause of the contract was what was missing. There was no gag order. There was no silence. Justin Baldoni walked away completely free to speak his mind whenever he chooses, however he wants to, whoever will listen. As per my prediction, he is definitely preparing to do a documentary or a tell- all interview. This prospect is not going to be good for Blake Lively. She has spent millions of dollars so he could maintain his silence. But now she has to wait for his response, and she cannot do a single thing to stop it. The market for Justin Baldoni's story is quite massive. He is getting offers worth up to $10 million for television interviews, multi-part docuseries projects, and major book deals. That is the price tag on a story, and he has not even started telling her feelings. He is champing at the bit to sit down on camera and give his full unfiltered account of what happened on the set of It Ends With Us and the vicious legal war that followed. He has receipts, official evidence along with his own memory of every single thing that happened, and he's going to share all of it. A tell- all all book written by Justin would be an absolute blockbuster, and I for sure cannot wait to read it. Experts and industry insiders also believe that this book could be detailing Hollywood's dark side, evidence tampering, and coordinated campaign executed by Blake and Ryan would be an absolutely titanic bestseller. And I mean titanic in every sense of the word because this is a story about a massive ship sinking and taking everyone down with it.

[00:19:46]>> does write a book about this, it's a guaranteed bestseller. It's going to be huge. I agree. It is going to be huge if he agrees to Justin Baldoni's book would possibly expose the dark reality of Hollywood in a way the public has rarely seen. It would detail exactly how public relations firms manipulate the media, how charities like Vital Voices are used as weapons, and how independent creators have to fight against PR machines.

[00:20:13]Meanwhile, Blake Lively's settlement hasn't just affected her. It has taken down innocent people, too. And the most prominent casualty of this whole disaster, aside from the couple themselves, is Colleen Hoover, the bestselling author of the original It Ends With Us novel. Now, I really want to be fair here because Colleen Hoover didn't set out to hurt anyone. She was just a writer who wrote a book that connected with millions of people. When Justin originally bought the rights to the book back in 2019, he worked closely with Hoover to bring her vision to life.

[00:20:47]He made sure she was involved in the creative process in a way that a lot of big Hollywood directors don't bother to do with authors. But then when Blake Lively entered the picture and began her takeover of the film, Hoover made a big mistake. Blind by the status of A-list celebrities and the desperate desire to join the Hollywood elite, she turned her back on Justin. She unfollowed Justin on Instagram at Blake Lively's request, which might seem small, but it wasn't.

[00:21:14]Millions of people followed her. When she unfollowed him and made a show of it, she was signaling to all of those people that he was a problem. She was telling them to pick sides and she made sure they picked hers. She posted glowing statements about Blake on her social media while remaining completely silent as Justin Baldoni's life was being torn apart by false allegations.

[00:21:37]She didn't say a word in his defense.

[00:21:40]She didn't stand up for the man who had given her dream a shot. She just stayed quiet and posted pretty pictures with Blake and hoped that nobody would remember that she used to be on his side. Well, this betrayal has permanently ruined Colleen Hoover's reputation with a huge chunk of her audience. But, what do y'all think about this recent update of judge denying to release those attorney fees that Blake and her lawyers are demanding? Leave your thoughts in the comments.