SDNY Judge Cuts Blake Lively's Fee Award to $407K — 5% of $8M Sought

For employment and litigation attorneys, the doctrinal import of Judge Liman's August 26 ruling is the apportionment question: when a fee-shifting statute protects only defamation claims, how do you slice a $7.5 million fee request spanning defamation, extortion, and false light counterclaims? The answer — roughly $363,245 in fees — is the first judicial line drawn under California's AB 933, effective January 1, 2024, and it signals that survivor-protection fee awards will be parsed claim-by-claim, not granted as litigation-wide reimbursement. The decision hands both defense and plaintiff-side counsel a concrete template for what fee petitions must now prove.

On August 26, 2026, U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman of the Southern District of New York ruled that Blake Lively is entitled to $363,245 in attorneys' fees and $44,206 in costs from Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios LLC — roughly $407,451 of the $8,035,040.88 she sought, comprising $7,495,526.87 in fees and $539,514.01 in costs. The written decision resolves the fee phase of the litigation over the 2024 film 'It Ends With Us' after the underlying claims settled, and it delivers the first known monetary award — and first binding limitation — under a California statute designed to shield sexual harassment survivors from retaliatory defamation suits. The dispute traces to Lively's December 2024 lawsuit alleging harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign, which prompted Baldoni and Wayfarer to file their own claims in response.

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That apportionment produced a 95% haircut: from $8,035,041 requested to $407,451 awarded.

The ruling's doctrinal center is statutory construction. California's AB 933, effective January 1, 2024, privileges good-faith communications reporting sexual harassment, assault, or discrimination and permits a survivor who is sued for defamation over such statements to recover attorneys' fees and costs. Liman held that the statute reaches only work performed to defend against defamation claims — not the entire counterclaim suite Baldoni and Wayfarer asserted. Because Baldoni's responsive pleadings bundled defamation with non-defamation theories including civil extortion and false light invasion of privacy, Lively's attorneys were required to apportion their billing claim-by-claim. The judge concluded the bulk of the claimed hours fell outside the statute's narrow reach, leaving her with only the defamation-defensible slice.

That apportionment produced a 95% haircut: from $8,035,041 requested to $407,451 awarded. The operational lesson for practitioners is that fee-shifting statutes do not underwrite entire litigation; they demand claim-level causation. Attorneys seeking recovery under section 47.1 or analogous anti-SLAPP fee provisions must keep contemporaneous, claim-specific time records and be prepared to defend every hour against apportionment challenges. Block-billed or undifferentiated entries, and a theory that the entire case was retaliation, are unlikely to survive this framework. The fee component — $363,245 against $7,495,526.87 requested — lands just under 5%, a figure Baldoni's counsel emphasized. In-house teams should also note that Lively's $539,514.01 cost request was reduced to $44,206, signaling similar rigor on expense apportionment.