The Origin of the Legal Firestorm
The tangle of lawsuits stems from a December 2024 complaint Lively filed with California’s Civil Rights Department, alleging that Baldoni, who also directed It Ends With Us, sexually harassed her on set. She claimed his team, including PR consultant Wallace, retaliated with a smear campaign once she spoke out.
Baldoni later fired back with defamation suits in January against both Lively and The New York Times, which reported on her allegations. Those cases were dismissed in June. In February, Wallace and Street Relations struck back with their own defamation claim, seeking $1 million in damages for reputational harm and $6 million in punitive damages.
Lively moved to dismiss in April, accusing them of trying to “drag her into a foreign court that lacks jurisdiction.” She argued that their claims overlapped with her pending New York federal case, which Judge Ezra ultimately agreed with.
Judge Rejects ‘Texas Targeting’ Argument
Judge Ezra dismantled Wallace’s argument that Texas jurisdiction applied because Lively’s California complaint mentioned him as a Texas resident. Such mentions, he ruled, were merely biographical.
The judge also shot down the idea that her statements were specifically “directed toward” Texas audiences. Even if the remarks were shared with The New York Times and republished globally, he found no indication that they targeted Texas readers in particular.
