A judge dismissed Justin Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit against Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and their publicist Leslie Sloane, as well as his $250 million defamation suit against The New York Times. Judge Lewis Liman ruled Monday that the suit filed by Baldoni and his company, Wayfarer, accusing Lively of defamation was not valid due to his co-star making these alleged defamatory statements in formal court complaints, which are “privileged.” Liman also dropped the defamation allegations against Reynolds, Sloane, and the Times, saying that Wayfarer failed to allege that the three parties “would have seriously doubted these statements were true based on the information available to them, as is required for them to be liable for defamation under applicable law,” according to the court filing obtained by People. A spokesperson for the Times told The Daily Beast that they were “greatful” Baldoni’s suit was dismissed, calling it “a meritless attempt to stifle honest reporting.” “Our journalists went out and covered carefully and fairly a story of public importance, and the court recognized that the law is designed to protect just that sort of journalism,” they added. This comes off the heels of Lively dropping two claims of emotional distress against Baldoni after his team requested she provide her medical records to back-up her accusations. Her legal team described this move as merely “routine” to help “streamline and focus” on her case. But Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, called out Lively in March, saying that her attempt to try and “dismiss herself from the self-concocted disaster she initiated is one of the most abhorrent examples of abusing our legal system.”
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