US: Claims for defamation and extortion: The new normal for men accused of sexual harassment?

Lily Smith, Senior Associate

Lily Smith joined the US team of McAllister Olivarius as a Senior Associate in 2024. Prior to joining McO, Lily worked at Morrison & Foerster’s Tokyo office where she represented corporate clients in US civil litigation proceedings and in arbitration proceedings.

The sprawling Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni dispute has commanded much media attention since last December. While many accounts portray a cartoonish battle between hero (handsome, misunderstood Baldoni) and villain (manipulative, spoiled Lively), the real battle will not be on social media, where Baldoni has waged a fierce campaign, but in the courtroom – where a similarly aggressive legal strategy may not be rewarded by the courts.

Since #MeToo, celebrities like Johnny Depp and Garth Brooks have sought to defend themselves from allegations of sexual misconduct by going on the offensive, filing defamation and civil extortion suits instead of taking the more traditional step back from public life or simply refuting the claims in court.  Badoni, despite burnishing his reputation as a vocal supporter of women through his “Man Enough” podcast, has followed this same brutal playbook.

The dispute centers on Baldoni’s conduct as director, executive producer and co-star of It Ends with Us, a 2024 film about domestic violence. Lively, the lead actress, alleged that Baldoni and his co-producers sexually harassed her and other female cast members during the filming. Lively used her leverage as a Hollywood star to negotiate a set of safeguards for herself and other female crew members. These safeguards were detailed in a side-letter to her contract, which also stipulated that Baldoni and his production company would not retaliate against her for raising these complaints.

While It Ends with Us was an undeniable box-office success, grossing over $350 million in theatres worldwide, Lively nevertheless experienced a sustained wave of negative press and online commentary during and after the film’s premiere.

This past December, New York Times broke a story titled “We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,” detailing how Baldoni’s public relations team mounted an aggressive campaign against Lively, allegedly to pre-emptively undermine her credibility should she go public with her allegations of sexual harassment. Baldoni engaged the same PR agency which represented Johnny Depp during his trials against Amber Heard and whose practices have been the subject of extensive investigative reporting. That same week, Lively filed a lawsuit  alleging sexual harassment as well as infringement of the Pump Act, which guarantees adequate and private breaks for breast pumping during work hours.   Baldoni responded by filing a $400 million lawsuit against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and other parties for civil extortion, defamation and other claims on January 16,2025.  

To win his extortion claim, Baldoni will have to show that Lively, Reynolds and the other defendants (1) made a threat that they knew was wrong; (2) that the threat involved a demand for money, property or services; and (3) that Baldoni and the other plaintiffs in his suit complied with the demand. 

In his complaint, Baldoni has claimed that Lively’s requests for basic professionalism and courtesies, such as not discussing Lively’s appearance or sex life and not coming into Lively’s trailer when she was undressing, were “extortion.”  His argument is, in part, that he had to accept her “wrongful” demands or she would refuse to return to work on the movie, which would cause him to lose millions of dollars that he had raised to make it, as well as the years he invested in planning the production. This is a risky strategy. Convincing the courts that a woman refusing to work under unsafe conditions is extortion will be a high bar to clear.

SLAPP and ANTI-SLAPP

Baldoni upped the ante by also filing a defamation suit against the New York Times, which reported on his smear campaign, as well as by counter-suing Lively and Reynolds in their personal capacity. This is a so-called “SLAPP” suit, Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation, which describes a suit against people who have made public statements in newspaper articles or other public forums about an issue of public interest, to bury them in legal costs and tie them up in courts. Often the plaintiffs don’t expect to win these lawsuits but want to intimidate anyone who dares to speak out against them.

In suing the New York Times, Baldoni may well have overreached.  His lawsuit against the newspaper for libel is likely to run afoul of California’s anti-SLAPP law, which shifts the burden onto Baldoni to prove he is likely to establish defamation and awards legal fees to Lively if he can’t.  In his suit, Baldoni argued that the Times had improperly and uncritically reported on Lively’s California Civil Rights Department (“CRD”) claim and had cherry picked and altered the evidence that it relied on to claim that Baldoni and others had engaged in a smear campaign. The Times’ story demonstrates its usual high standards of multiple sourcing and cross-checking, so despite the thrill Baldoni might have gotten from the initial headlines, he has an uphill climb, and lots to pay if he loses.  

This kind of suit will likely not intimidate New York Times, but the overall effect may well be to chill free speech.  Smaller outlets or freelance journalists could fear reporting on smear campaigns by the powerful, lest they trigger protracted litigation. This risk is all the greater if an anti-SLAPP motion by the Times fails.

Baldoni’s legal strategy reflects a troubling ratcheting up of response from defendants. If his high-risk, high-reward response should become the new normal, it would set a concerning precedent for other victims of sexual harassment or discrimination – whether Hollywood stars or ordinary people.  

McAllister Olivarius (McO) recently defeated a defamation countersuit brought against two clients who had endured years of sexual abuse in the 1960s and 1970s from the guru of the Integral Yoga Institute (IYI). With McO’s help, the clients first sued IYI and its successor organization, Yogaville, under the New York Adult Survivors Act for negligence, sexual discrimination, gender-motivated violence and other claims.  IYI and Yogaville responded with a defamation countersuit, which McO defeated through an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss. McO argued that these counterclaims had been brought to intimidate and exact revenge on the clients for speaking about their sexual abuse. The judge agreed, threw out the counterclaims, and required IYI and Yogaville to pay the legal fees the clients had to spend defending themselves.