Judge Awards Blake Lively $407,451 in Fees and Costs Under California Civil Code Section 47.1

Judge Awards Blake Lively $407,451 in Fees and Costs Under California Civil Code Section 47.1

On August 26, 2026, U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman directed the Clerk of Court to enter judgment for Blake Lively in the amount of $363,245.40 in fees and $44,206.35 in costs under California Civil Code section 47.1, about 5% of the $8 million she sought, having already denied her treble and punitive damages.

Information last verified on August 27, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses a federal district court's application of California Civil Code section 47.1 in a fee dispute arising from litigation in the Southern District of New York. It does not address anti-SLAPP procedure generally, which is covered in the site's defamation law hub, or any other state's fee-shifting rules for defamation defendants.

What Happened

Judge Lewis J. Liman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a 21-page Opinion and Order on August 26, 2026, setting the dollar amount Blake Lively is owed in attorneys' fees and costs under California Civil Code section 47.1. The ruling closes a phase of the consolidated litigation between Lively and Wayfarer Studios LLC, Justin Baldoni, and their co-defendants, captioned Lively v. Wayfarer Studios LLC, No. 24-cv-10049, and the related Wayfarer Studios LLC v. Lively, No. 25-cv-449. The Wayfarer parties had sued Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and her publicist for defamation, civil extortion, and related claims after Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of the film It Ends With Us. The court dismissed the defamation claim against Lively with prejudice in June 2025 and, in a separate June 2026 order, ruled she was entitled to fees under section 47.1.

The operative language of the August 26 order is direct about both halves of the ruling:

"Lively's request for attorneys' fees and costs is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to enter judgment for Lively in the amount of $363,245.40 in attorneys' fees and $44,206.35 in costs." (Opinion and Order at 21, Lively v. Wayfarer Studios LLC, No. 24-cv-10049 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 26, 2026), Dkt. No. 1452)

Lively had asked for $8,035,040.88 (roughly $7.5 million in attorneys' fees and $539,514.01 in costs), and the Wayfarer parties argued the request was so inflated the court should deny it altogether or, at a minimum, benchmark it to the $181,622.70 the New York Times separately sought for defending against a related defamation claim. The court sided closer to the Wayfarer parties' benchmark than to Lively's own billing submission, though it awarded Lively double the Times figure "including with respect to discovery and the briefing of the Section 47.1 motion" (Opinion and Order at 18).

The docket shows the case terminated on May 7, 2026: on that date, the parties filed a notice of settlement and joint stipulation dismissing Lively's own harassment lawsuit against Baldoni (No. 24-cv-10049) with prejudice, shortly before it was set for trial on May 18, 2026. That stipulation expressly preserved Lively's already-pending motion for fees under section 47.1 in the separate Wayfarer defamation suit (No. 25-cv-449), and the parties agreed in it to "irrevocably waive any appeal from the Court's determination of the 47.1 Motion," the same motion resolved by the June 12 and August 26 orders (Dkt. No. 1434, Notice of Settlement and Joint Stipulation, filed May 7, 2026). Consistent with that waiver, no notice of appeal from either order appears on the docket as of this article's verification.

What the Law Actually Says

The central legal question in the August 26 order is what California Civil Code section 47.1 actually authorizes, and the statute's text answers it precisely. Section 47.1, added by the California Legislature in 2023 (AB 933) and effective January 1, 2024, provides:

"(a) A communication made by an individual, without malice, regarding an incident of sexual assault, harassment, or discrimination is privileged under Section 47. (b) A prevailing defendant in any defamation action brought against that defendant for making a communication that is privileged under this section shall be entitled to their reasonable attorney's fees and costs for successfully defending themselves in the litigation, plus treble damages for any harm caused to them by the defamation action against them, in addition to punitive damages available under Section 3294 or any other relief otherwise permitted by law." (Cal. Civ. Code § 47.1(a)-(b))

Subsection (c) limits who can invoke the privilege to "an individual that has, or at any time had, a reasonable basis to file a complaint of sexual assault, harassment, or discrimination, whether the complaint is, or was, filed or not." Subsection (d) defines the covered "communication" to include seven categories of factual reporting, from an act of sexual assault itself to workplace, housing, and school-based harassment or discrimination and to acts of retaliation for reporting it.

Section 47.1 is not California's anti-SLAPP statute. California's anti-SLAPP law, Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16, is a separate, older mechanism aimed broadly at lawsuits that target speech or petitioning activity "in connection with a public issue." Under section 425.16(b)(1), a defendant sued over such speech can file a "special motion to strike," and under section 425.16(c)(1), a defendant recovers fees and costs only by prevailing on that specific motion, though the same paragraph lets a plaintiff recover fees when the motion is frivolous or filed solely to cause delay. Section 47.1 works differently, and the August 26 opinion spells out the distinction in a footnote answering Lively's argument that section 47.1 must reach further than the anti-SLAPP statute:

"Under California law, a party is not entitled to fees under the anti-SLAPP statute unless she has made a motion to strike and prevailed on it... By contrast, under Section 47.1, the defendant need only have prevailed on a defamation claim that was based on a statement that is privileged under Section 47.1." (Opinion and Order at 8 n.4, citing Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 425.16(c); S.B. Beach Props. v. Berti, 138 P.3d 713, 714 (Cal. 2006))

In practice, that means a defendant does not need to file any particular motion to invoke section 47.1. She needs only to be the prevailing defendant on a defamation claim grounded in a privileged report of sexual assault, harassment, or discrimination. The California Legislature's stated purpose for the statute, quoted in the opinion, was to address SLAPP suits of a specific kind: the court cited legislative history describing a pattern of litigation "increasingly being used as a weapon to threaten, silence, intimidate, and dissuade survivors of sexual assault, harassment, and discrimination from speaking out against their abusers and exposing predators" (Opinion and Order at 5, quoting Dkt. No. 146-1 at 54). Readers researching how a similar dispute would be evaluated on the merits, rather than on the fee question resolved here, can review the general elements of a defamation claim that California courts apply, including the privileges available to a defendant before any fee-shifting statute comes into play.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The most legally significant part of the August 26 order is not the dollar figure. It is the court's ruling on the scope of what section 47.1 covers, an issue on which the statute's own text is ambiguous. Lively argued that once she prevailed on the defamation claim, she was entitled to fees for the entire underlying litigation, including work on claims unrelated to defamation, such as the civil extortion and breach-of-contract allegations against her. The court rejected that reading, holding that when "a cause of action for which attorney fees are provided by statute is joined with other causes of action for which attorney fees are not permitted, the prevailing party may recover only on the statutory cause of action" (Opinion and Order at 7, citing Akins v. Enter. Rent-A-Car Co. of S.F., 94 Cal. Rptr. 2d 448, 452 (Cal. Ct. App. 2000)). That narrowing is why the award landed far below the amount requested: Lively billed extensively for discovery, media strategy, and motion practice tied to claims the fee statute does not reach.

The gap between the roughly $8.03 million requested and the $407,451.75 awarded also reflects specific defects the court found in the fee submission itself, not just the scope ruling. The opinion catalogs several categories of billing it declined to compensate: vague or heavily redacted time entries that gave the court no way to judge what work was performed; fees for 71 of the 82 timekeepers billed, since Lively supplied biographical, title, and rate information for only 11 of them; time spent on media relations and press strategy, which courts "generally" do not treat as compensable litigation work; and purely clerical tasks billed at attorney rates. Rather than accept Lively's own tally, the court anchored its award to a third data point already in the record, the $181,622.70 the New York Times had separately sought for defending against the identical underlying statements, and awarded Lively double that figure because, in the court's words, "Lively was reasonably required to incur greater fees" (Opinion and Order at 18). A fee order built this way is not primarily a statement about the merits of the underlying dispute; it is a demonstration of how closely a court will scrutinize a lodestar submission when the request is, in the court's own words, "unreasonable."

The order also confirms something narrower but useful: the June 12, 2026 ruling had already denied Lively's request for treble and punitive damages, and it did so on procedural grounds rather than by finding she suffered no compensable harm. The court held that Lively sought those damages through a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d), a rule that by its terms authorizes recovery only of "costs" and "attorney's fees," not damages, so treble and punitive damages could not be obtained through that motion; the court separately held that this procedural bar on damages did not prevent her from recovering fees and costs under section 47.1. Fees and costs were the only relief the August 26 order could address as a result.

How This Affects You

For a defendant who successfully defeats a defamation claim in California, or a defamation claim to which California substantive law applies, section 47.1 can be a real fee-shifting tool, but this ruling shows its limits in practice. It reaches only the specific defamation claim and work genuinely intertwined with defending it, not an entire multi-claim lawsuit simply because a defamation count happens to be included. A party asserting entitlement to fees under the statute should expect a court to scrutinize billing records line by line, and generalized or redacted time entries carry real risk of being disallowed outright.

The order is also a reminder that fee-shifting statutes and anti-SLAPP statutes serve different functions even when they arise from the same underlying speech. A defendant considering how to respond to a lawsuit touching on a report of harassment or assault should not assume the procedural requirements of one statute apply to the other. Ongoing harassing conduct is a separate problem on a separate track, such as California's civil harassment restraining order process, which is not a substitute for defending the lawsuit itself.

What Happens Next

The docket for No. 1:24-cv-10049 shows the underlying case as terminated on May 7, 2026, the date the parties settled and stipulated to dismiss Lively's own lawsuit against Baldoni with prejudice, shortly before its scheduled May 18, 2026 trial date. That same stipulation states the parties "irrevocably waive any appeal from the Court's determination of the 47.1 Motion," the fee motion resolved by the June 12 and August 26 orders. No notice of appeal from either order appears on the docket as of this article's verification, consistent with that waiver. The August 26 order directs the Clerk of Court to enter judgment, and the docket entry notes transmission to the Orders and Judgments Clerk for processing; no separate judgment document had been docketed as of August 27, 2026. A separate August 21, 2026 order also requires the parties to tell the court by September 4, 2026 what material, if any, still requires continued sealing. Readers following the case should consult the public docket for any later filing.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers a California statute as applied in a federal court proceeding in New York and reflects sources verified on August 27, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• how defamation claims are generally evaluated under state law
• California's specific defamation elements and privileges
• how New York's own defamation standards differ from California's
• California's civil harassment restraining order process

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Last updated: 2026-08-27. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-08-27.