Insurance companies sued by Justin Baldoni for allegedly refusing to pay his legal bills during litigation with Blake Lively are asking a judge to dismiss the actor’s claims wholly or in part, but Baldoni’s attorneys state in new court papers that the motion by one of the insurers should be denied because Lively was never his employee.
The actor and director’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit stems from the 2024 film “It Ends With Us.” He is suing insurers of the film for allegedly declining to pay the costs of litigation stemming from Lively’s underlying suit and Baldoni’s countersuit.
In the lawsuit filed in July 2025, Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios LLC, contend the underwriters breached a contract to defend and indemnity the plaintiffs against lawsuits such as that filed by the Lively, the film’s co-star. In the New York-based litigation, Lively alleged Baldoni and people associated with him tried to malign her after she reported on-set sexual harassment.
Baldoni, 42, filed a $400 million countersuit alleging that Lively’s accusations were baseless have caused serious harm to his career, reputation and personal life. A judge dismissed the countersuit last November and the pair settled her lawsuit in May.
Attorneys for New York Marine and General Insurance Co. and QBE Insurance Corp. previously filed court papers asking Judge James I. Montgomery to dismiss all of Baldoni’s claims or at minimum some of them. Baldoni’s new court papers, filed Aug. 20, address the QBE dismissal motion and the company’s contention a policy coverage exclusion existed for employment-related wrongful acts.
“QBE says that its policy’s employment practices exclusion bars coverage because Blake Lively was an employee and that Mr. Baldoni was her employer,” Baldoni’s lawyers state in their court papers. “But that is just false and QBE knows it. It already has been determined in Ms. Lively’s lawsuit … that she was not and never had been an employee of Mr. Baldoni…”
Instead, Lively was an independent contractor , according to Baldoni’s attorneys’ court papers.
There is no dispute that the Lively lawsuit was a claim as defined in the Baldoni policy and the insurer was obligated to defend any claim, even if any of the allegations are groundless, false or fraudulent, according to the Baldoni attorneys’ court papers.
In their pleadings, QBE attorneys state that Lively’s alleged workplace sexual harassment, retaliation, and other wrongful conduct allegations against Baldoni and Wayfarer, arise directly from her employment as the lead actress in the production of a film.
Hearings on the various motions are scheduled in November.