Ryan Reynolds Files Motion to Dismiss Justin Baldoni’s Defamation Claims
The saga of It Ends With Us co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni is seemingly never-ending. (Seriously, the movie was released in August of last year, but the drama continues…
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 17: Ryan Reynolds speaks onstage during the Fast Company Innovation Festival 2024 at BMCC Tribeca PAC on September 17, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Fast Company)
The saga of It Ends With Us co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni is seemingly never-ending. (Seriously, the movie was released in August of last year, but the drama continues with various lawsuits and countersuits.) The latest update is that Ryan Reynolds, Lively’s husband, has filed a motion to dismiss Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit.
Ryan Reynolds Calling Baldoni a “Predator” Doesn’t Qualify as Defamation, Per Reynolds’ Legal Team
On Tuesday, March 18, Reynolds and his legal team filed a motion to dismiss the $400 million lawsuit Baldoni filed against Reynolds, Lively and their publicist, Leslie Sloane. His lawyers, Mike Gottlieb and Esra Hudson, claim that Reynolds calling Baldoni a “predator” in private conversations “doesn’t legally qualify as defamation,” as reported by People.
Reynolds's lawyers said of the motion in a statement, “The entirety of Mr. Baldoni’s case appears to be based on Mr. Reynolds allegedly privately calling Mr. Baldoni a ‘predator,’ but here’s the problem — that is not defamation unless they can show that Mr. Reynolds did not believe that statement to be true.”
The statement continues, “The complaint doesn’t allege that. In fact, it suggests the opposite: that Mr. Reynolds genuinely believes Mr. Baldoni is a predator.”
In their motion, the legal team also referenced Lively’s allegations against Baldoni of sexual harassment and retaliation. Gottlieb and Hudson added, “Mr. Reynolds has a First Amendment right to express his opinion of Mr. Baldoni, which should be comforting to a group of people who have repeatedly called Ms. Lively and Mr. Reynolds ‘bullies’ and other names over the past year.”
Variety reported that the motion also states that Baldoni’s “hurt feelings” of being called a “predator” do not “give rise to legal claims” and that Reynolds calling him as such “amounts to constitutionally protected opinion.” The motion also argues that Reynolds was just saying his “unabashed negative opinion of Mr. Baldoni’s character.”
Reynolds’s legal team also called Baldoni’s lawsuit a “burn book filled with grievances attempting to shame Mr. Reynolds for being the kind of man who is ‘confident enough to listen’ to the woman in his life and to hold her ‘anguish and actually stand with her.'”
A trial is set for March 6, 2026, in New York for both of the parties’ lawsuits.
