Blake Lively's lawyers fuel feud with claim of victory after 'It Ends With Us' settlement

NEW YORK (AP) — The bitter public feud between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni may outlive their court fight after all.

Three days after announcing a settlement of the lawsuit brought by Lively over the 2024 film “It Ends With Us,” her lawyers put out a statement Thursday calling the deal a “resounding victory.”

“By agreeing to this settlement, and waiving their right to appeal, Justin Baldoni and every individual defendant now face personal liability for abusing the legal system to silence and intimidate Ms. Lively,” attorneys Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson said.

They were alluding to the tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and penalties that a judge could make the defendants pay for costs incurred by Lively when Baldoni filed a countersuit that was ultimately tossed out by U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman last June. That complaint accused Lively, her husband — “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds — and their publicist of defamation and extortion.

In newly filed legal papers, Lively’s lawyers said the law requires “severe and mandatory penalties against any party who files unsuccessful retaliatory defamation actions against sexual harassment and retaliation complainants.”

They also said that by recognizing in a statement issued by both sides Monday that Lively's concerns “deserved to be heard,” Baldoni and the other defendants “have ended once and for all the fiction that Ms. Lively ‘fabricated’ claims of sexual harassment and retaliation.”

Her aim was always to “expose and hold accountable those who weaponize smear campaigns and retaliatory lawsuits to intimidate and silence survivors,” the attorneys said. “That mission continues.”

Attorney Bryan Freedman countered that the Baldoni camp considers it “a win and total victory.”

Freedman said the court already threw out 10 of Lively's 13 claims and she “voluntarily dismissed the rest.”

“In our view, they settled because they knew they were going to lose in court,” Freedman said. “All that remains is a pending request for fees based on a very narrow issue that has been with the court since September 2025.”

Lively's lawsuit against Baldoni and his production company, filed in December 2024, alleged that she and other women were subjected to sexual harassment on the movie set when Baldoni commented on their bodies and discussed personal sexual experiences and pornography.

The sexual harassment claims were recently thrown out by Liman, but he left some retaliation claims intact for a trial. The judge concluded that Lively could not assert sexual harassment because she was an independent contractor rather than an employee during the filming.

The settlement of the remaining claims, announced Monday, was formally entered into the court record Thursday. The terms were not disclosed.

“It Ends With Us” is an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel that begins as a romance but takes a dark turn into domestic violence. It exceeded box office expectations with a $50 million debut, but the release was shrouded by speculation over discord between Lively and Baldoni.

Lively previously appeared in the 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and the TV series “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012 before starring in films including “The Town” and “The Shallows.”

Baldoni starred in the TV comedy “ Jane the Virgin,” directed the 2019 film “Five Feet Apart” and wrote “Man Enough,” a book challenging traditional notions of masculinity.

Blake Lively arrives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the "Costume Art" exhibition on Monday, May 4, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Blake Lively arrives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the "Costume Art" exhibition on Monday, May 4, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Blake Lively appears at the SNL50: The Anniversary Special at Rockefeller Plaza in New York on Feb. 16, 2025, left, and Justin Baldoni appears at a special screening of "The Boys in the Boat" in New York on Dec. 13, 2023. (Photos by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

A note that Jeffrey Epstein 's former cellmate claims to have found after the financier's first suspected jail suicide attempt in 2019 has been made public — not because of the Justice Department's release of records related to the sex offender, but as part of an unrelated case.

The government's explanation: It never had the note.

“The note has not yet been authenticated, and this is the first time DOJ is seeing it as well," the department said Thursday when asked why it wasn't part of the voluminous Epstein files.

Nicholas Tartaglione said he discovered the handwritten note in a book after the disgraced financier was found in their cell at a Manhattan federal jail with a strip of bedsheet around his neck. Epstein was subsequently moved to a different cell, where a few weeks later, he was found dead, alone, in a suicide.

Tartaglione, a former police officer then facing murder charges, said he gave the note to his lawyers to protect himself against any claim that he might have harmed Epstein while they were in custody together. Epstein was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges at the time.

Since 2021, the note had been in a vault in federal court in New York. It somehow became part of proceedings between Tartaglione and his lawyers over their representation in his murder case. Anything related to that dispute was sealed out of the public's eye by the judge because it involved attorney-client privilege.

Tartaglione, a former suburban New York officer turned drug dealer, was convicted in April 2023 in the strangulation death of one man and the execution-style murders of three other people. He said he discovered the note in a book he was reading in his jail cell.

The New York Times petitioned U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas to release the note, noting that Tartaglione, now serving a life sentence, has talked publicly about it. The judge agreed to the request Wednesday, adding that Epstein's privacy interests in the note had been “vastly reduced” due to his death.

“They investigated me for month — found nothing!!!” said the short note, which is hard to decipher in some places and has not been authenticated. “It is a treat to be able to choose” the “time to say goodbye,” the note continues. “Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!

“NO FUN. NOT WORTH IT!!” the note concludes.

According to jail records, Epstein had friction marks and skin irritation on his neck from the suspected July 23, 2019, suicide attempt. Jail officers said he was breathing heavily but responsive. Epstein told a guard Tartaglione had attacked him, but later recanted.

Jail officials subsequently placed Epstein on suicide watch for 31 hours before downgrading him to psychiatric observation, which was his status when he killed himself on Aug. 10, 2019.

The Justice Department did not object to releasing the note. Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley told the judge the public was interested in the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death.

Buckley also said that while two Justice Department lawyers were included in the proceedings between Tartaglione and his attorneys in 2021, they were barred by the judge from disclosing anything from those hearings to protect his attorney-client privilege. So if they did see the note, they weren't allowed to tell anyone about it.

This document, released Thursday, May 7, 2026, by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, shows a note that Jeffrey Epstein’s former cellmate said he found after Epstein’s reported suicide attempt in July 2019. (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York via AP)

FILE - This March 28, 2017, photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)