Actress Blake Lively has been hit with another lawsuit amid ongoing legal drama with her “It Ends With Us” co-star, Justin Baldoni.
Now, Jed Wallace of the Texas-based crisis-management firm Street Relations, Inc. is suing the actress for defamation, per People magazine.
He’s demanding $7 million in the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, alleging that Lively named him in documents against Baldoni and accused his firm of “weaponiz[ing] a digital army around the country from New York to Los Angeles to create, seed and promote content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums.”
Wallace’s legal filing says, “The statements of fact, actual or implied, of and concerning Plaintiffs in the Precursor and CRD Complaint are false, defamatory, made with either negligence or ‘actual malice’ and have caused millions of dollars in reputational harm including both general and special damages through emotional harm (Wallace), actual damages and real and projected loss of business (Wallace and Street) in an amount that exceeds $1,000,000.”
One of Wallace’s attorneys, Chip Babcock, also issued a statement stating that his client didn’t even know the actress.
“Mr. Wallace, who is a very private person, has never met or spoken to Ms. Lively. Ever,” he stated. “He has not engaged in a smear campaign against her at any point in time. The decision to file this lawsuit to rightfully protect himself and his family was made after Ms. Lively not only filed against him first in Texas, but indicated she intended to name him in yet another lawsuit.”
Lively’s legal team responded to the new lawsuit with a statement: “Another day, another state, another nine-figure lawsuit seeking to sue Ms. Lively ‘into oblivion’ for speaking out against sexual harassment and retaliation.”
“This is not just a publicity stunt — it is transparent retaliation in response to allegations contained within a sexual harassment and retaliation complaint that Ms. Lively filed with the California Civil Rights Department,” her lawyers said. “While this lawsuit will be dismissed, we are pleased that Mr. Wallace has finally emerged from the shadows, and that he too will be held accountable in federal court.”
Baldoni and Lively have been battling publicly as they await trial in their lawsuits against each other, which have since been combined into one. Earlier this week, Judge Liman denied Lively and her husband Ryan Reynold’s request to enact a gag order on Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman, who has been releasing text messages, recordings, and other items to the press in an effort to establish his client’s innocence.
“My expectation is the parties will comply with their ethical obligations. I don’t expect this case to devolve into satellite litigation over the comments of a lawyer,” Liman said. “Both have said a lot in the pleadings that give the public plenty to feast upon.”
Judge Liman warned that if both sides continue to fight their cases publicly, he could move the trial date up from its currently scheduled date of March 2026.
“I’m not going to do that, I’m convinced the parties need the time for discovery,” the judge stated. “But if it turns out that this ends up being litigated in the press in a way that would prejudice the opportunity of a fair trial…one of the tools the court has is to accelerate the date of the trial.”
