A $250 million lawsuit was reportedly filed Tuesday afternoon by “It Ends with Us” co-star and director Justin Baldoni and nine other plaintiffs against The New York Times according to new reports at Variety and Deadline.
The trade publications say publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, and ‘Ends’ producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz are also among the plantiffs suing the newspaper for libel and false light invasion of privacy over the outlet’s 4,000-word article earlier this month titled “We Can Bury Anyone”.
The original article rocked the film industry and led to WME dropping Baldoni as a client hours after publication. The report covered how “It Ends with Us” star Blake Lively allegedly endured months of sexual harassment and supposedly faced retaliation in the form of a smear campaign because she voiced her concerns.
The parties claim the Times article “cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead”. A spokesperson for the New York Times responded to Variety, saying their story was “meticulously and responsibly reported” and they “plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
Attorney Bryan Freedman, who filed the new lawsuit, reportedly alleges that the NYT: “Relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives.”
Lively’s side of the story was told in an 80-page letter filed December 20th with the California Civil Rights Department. Her lawyers have already responded to the new lawsuit, saying it changes nothing about the claims advanced in Lively’s earlier complaint or her federal complaint filed earlier today.