Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively can’t agree… what’s new?!
The parties were back in court again on Tuesday to hash out some pretrial issues before their case goes before a jury next month. The biggest issue at hand was arguing over Blake’s enormous damages request.
As we covered earlier this month, the Gossip Girl star is seeking compensatory damages ranging from about $142 million to nearly $300 million, per People! Holy s**t! She believes she suffered a severe financial loss as a result of the It Ends With Us director’s alleged smear campaign against her, including $49 million in losses to Blake Brown, her haircare company, and another $22 million for her beverage brand, Betty Buzz.
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Baldoni’s team vehemently disagrees with this theory, according to TMZ, arguing that Blake simply has a bad track record of running businesses. They think she screwed her brands up all by herself! Why? Because people just don’t like her. Burn!
Backing up their narrative, they reminded the court of when the actress mocked Princess Catherine‘s photoshop scandal. Conspiracy theories and jokes surrounding Kate Middleton‘s whereabouts and well-being ran rampant online in 2024. Then, it was announced that the Princess of Wales was secretly battling cancer!
The Jane the Virgin alum’s lawyers accused Blake of “bullying” Kate for posting jokes at the time, claiming behavior like that — and there are many more examples — is what really damaged Blake’s reputation!
To be fair, at the time, Blake was one of very few people who owned up to her mistake and apologized for making “a silly post around the ‘photoshop fails’ frenzy” before understanding the full context, saying she was “mortified.” See it in full (below):
A pretty classy apology, if you ask us! But, yeah, it doesn’t deny the fact she still made the post in the first place.
Defending herself, Lively’s lawyers insisted her businesses might’ve taken off if Justin hadn’t retaliated against her — something that totally derailed her work. Hmm.
The Baldoni attorneys went on to argue that the $132 million Blake claimed she would’ve earned in the next five years without this legal mess is also not accurate. As a performer, Blake naturally has a pretty sporadic work schedule as projects come and go — and so, to earn $132 million in five years implies she would’ve had to have been working almost non-stop, something Baldoni’s team just doesn’t think is realistic.
Not to mention that while Lively claims she might’ve made an It Ends With Us sequel as part of these future projects, Baldoni doesn’t think she stood a chance at that! Regardless of the retaliation drama, his team brought up the fact that Sony Pictures exec Andrea Giannetti once referred to the leading lady as a “f**king terrorist.” Damn! Because of this, it’s highly unlikely that the studio would’ve wanted to make another film. Jeez.
It’s unclear what the judge thinks on all this. One thing that is for certain? We can all expect a lot more back and forth like this to come in the next few weeks…
Whose side are you on? Tell us (below)!
[Image via MEGA/WENN & Soul Boom/YouTube]
