Justin Baldoni Sues Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds for $400 Million

Justin Baldoni has filed a new lawsuit against Blake Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloane and Sloane’s firm, Vision PR, Inc., just weeks after Lively accused her It Ends With Us director and co-star of sexual harassment and a retaliatory campaign against her.

Baldoni’s attorneys filed a $400 million lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Thursday, Jan. 16 on behalf of the actor, producer Jamey Heath, publicist Jennifer Abel and crisis publicist Melissa Nathan, reports PEOPLE, claiming civil extortion, defamation, false light invasion of privacy, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, intentional interference with contractual relations, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage.

Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, told the outlet in a statement, “This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media.”

“It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret,” Freedman continued. “Blake Lively was either severely misled by her team or intentionally and knowingly misrepresented the truth.”

“Let’s not forget, Ms. Lively and her team attempted to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for heinously selfish reasons through their own dangerous manipulation of the media before even taking any actual legal action. We know the truth, and now the public does too,” the statement added. “Justin and his team have nothing to hide, documents do not lie.”

On Dec. 31, Baldoni filed a libel suit against The New York Times, accusing the newspaper of having “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead” in its expose surrounding Lively’s sexual harassment lawsuit.

A New York Times spokesperson responded at the time. “The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead. Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well. We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”