Blake Lively Faces New Deposition Bid in $800,000 Legal Fees Fight Tied to Baldoni Saga in Texas

Blake Lively's legal battles stemming from her "It Ends With Us" dispute with Justin Baldoni are not yet over, with a Texas court filing this week seeking to force the actress to sit for another deposition, this time in a separate fight over roughly $800,000 in attorneys' fees involving a crisis public relations consultant who worked with Baldoni's team.

Jed Wallace, a crisis communications specialist who worked with Baldoni's side during the broader legal dispute, filed new documents asking a Texas judge to compel Lively to appear for questioning, according to TMZ. The request comes months after Wallace's own defamation lawsuit against Lively was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, with the fight now centered specifically on Lively's bid to recover legal fees from Wallace following that dismissal.

What Wallace Is Seeking

According to the new filing, Wallace wants any deposition limited specifically to Lively's claims for attorneys' fees and damages, arguing he should be permitted to question what she knew and believed at the time she made statements involving him and his company, Street Relations Inc. Wallace contends that examining whether Lively's underlying allegations were made with malice could directly affect whether he can be held responsible for her legal bills, a distinct legal question from the substance of the harassment allegations that originally triggered the broader litigation.

Lively's Team Pushes Back Sharply

Lively's legal team rejected Wallace's latest filing in blunt terms in a statement to TMZ. "Jed Wallace already took Ms. Lively's deposition. His case was dismissed. Ms. Lively won," her attorneys said, describing the new request as "another desperate, meritless attempt." Her team further argued that Wallace's real motivation is concern over potentially being ordered to cover her legal costs, drawing a direct comparison to the outcome of Lively's separate, larger fee dispute with Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, in New York, where a judge similarly ruled she could pursue reasonable fees following that litigation.

A Case With a Complicated Procedural History

Wallace originally sued Lively in Texas over her allegations, but that lawsuit stalled after a judge ruled the Texas court lacked personal jurisdiction over the actress. Following that dismissal, Lively turned around and sought to recover roughly $800,000 in attorneys' fees from Wallace, along with additional costs and damages tied to defending against his suit. It is that fee request, rather than the original underlying allegations, that now forms the basis of the current deposition dispute, with Wallace arguing that if Lively is seeking substantial money from him, he should be entitled to question her directly about the claims that led to his own lawsuit in the first place.

A Separate but Related Fight With Baldoni Himself

The Texas dispute with Wallace runs parallel to a considerably larger fee battle Lively has waged directly against Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios in New York, stemming from the defamation lawsuit Baldoni originally filed against her, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and her publicist Leslie Sloane. After a judge dismissed that suit, along with a related $250 million claim Baldoni had separately filed against The New York Times, Lively's attorneys filed a motion seeking approximately $8 million in attorneys' fees and litigation costs, arguing the underlying lawsuit amounted to retaliatory litigation. In their filing, Lively's lawyers wrote that the goal of Baldoni's original suit "was not meant to win in court – its aim was to retaliate against Lively by falsely branding her a liar, intimidating witnesses and the media, and discouraging others from speaking out."

Baldoni's legal team has pushed back forcefully against that fee request, calling the roughly $7.5 million in billed attorney hours "stunning" and accusing Lively's team of inflating the time spent on the case. According to court filings reviewed by Forbes, Baldoni's lawyers argued the request covered more than 7,000 hours of legal work, which they characterized as roughly 20 times the amount courts have typically found reasonable in comparable defamation cases, and urged the court to deny the request entirely or substantially reduce it.

Baldoni Breaks His Public Silence

Amid the ongoing fee disputes, Baldoni spoke publicly about the litigation for the first time in recent weeks, posting a video alongside his wife, Emily Baldoni, in which he thanked supporters and said he was still "healing" from what he described as a "traumatic" legal fight. Emily Baldoni characterized the couple as victims of "injustice" in the same video, saying they had struggled to understand how the situation unfolded, particularly given that it had been framed publicly as, in her words, "a fight for women." Baldoni said he had largely remained quiet throughout the litigation because he "didn't want to add to the noise," preferring to let the legal process play out.

A Feud With No Clear End in Sight

The underlying dispute between Lively and Baldoni traces back to December 2024, when Lively first filed allegations that Baldoni sexually harassed her during production of "It Ends With Us." Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios responded with a $400 million countersuit against Lively, Reynolds and Sloane, alleging civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy, along with a separate $250 million libel suit against The New York Times. Both of those countersuits were ultimately dismissed by a federal judge earlier this year, clearing the way for the current phase of the litigation, which now centers largely on which side must cover the substantial legal costs both parties have accumulated throughout the sprawling case.

With the Texas deposition request now pending before a judge and the larger New York fee dispute between Lively and Baldoni still awaiting a final ruling, both matters remain unresolved heading into the fall. Whether Lively is ultimately compelled to sit for additional questioning in the Wallace matter, and how much of her requested $8 million fee award from Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios a judge ultimately approves, are expected to be among the next major developments in a legal saga that has already stretched well beyond its original defamation claims into an extended fight over the financial costs of the litigation itself.