Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are still headed to trial on her retaliation and defamation claims after both sides rejected any deal in a court-ordered settlement check on Monday. A federal judge told lawyers for both sides to call in with Magistrate Judge Sarah L. Cave at 3 p.m. ET to state their clients’ updated positions, and the case remains set for a May 18 trial.
The latest setback for any resolution came after Judge Lewis Liman dropped 10 of Lively’s 13 claims on April 2, but the ruling did not end the dispute. Her sexual harassment claims were tossed on jurisdictional and contractual grounds, not on the merits, leaving the fight centered on her allegation that Baldoni’s Crisis PR team mounted a preemptive online smear campaign against her.
That narrowed case has still not moved the parties toward a settlement, even after Liman ordered both sides into talks in December 2024. Lively and Baldoni later met face-to-face in a Manhattan courtroom a couple of months ago, and in February Baldoni attorney Bryan Freedman said efforts to reach a deal had been unsuccessful.
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Lively has said in recent days that the astroturfing claim was always the real case, and she reposted her strongly worded remarks from last week on Monday. In those comments, she said she would “never stop doing my part in fighting to expose the systems and people who seek to harm, shame, silence and retaliate against victims,” while also saying she was “distracted by the digital soap opera.”
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With settlement talks now exhausted and the trial date unchanged, the case is headed for a courtroom test of Lively’s retaliation and defamation claims. The judge’s April 2 ruling trimmed the lawsuit sharply, but it also made clear the core dispute survived, and that is the one the jury is likely to hear on May 18.
