Blake Lively’s Official Response to Justin Baldoni’s Lawsuit Is That “It Will Fail”

The ongoing dispute between It Ends With Us co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni took an even more personal turn this week with news of Baldoni's latest legal filings.

On Thursday, Jan. 16, Baldoni's lawyers filed a $400 million lawsuit against Lively as well as Ryan Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloane and Sloane's PR firm Vision PR, Inc. over events the actor and director says went on behind the scenes of It Ends With Us.

According to People, Baldoni is "suing on claims of civil extortion, defamation, false light invasion of privacy, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, intentional interference with contractual relations, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage."

"This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media. It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret. Blake Lively was either severely misled by her team or intentionally and knowingly misrepresented the truth," Baldoni's attorney, Bryan Freedman, said a statement.

"Let’s not forget, Ms. Lively and her team attempted to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for heinously selfish reasons through their own dangerous manipulation of the media before even taking any actual legal action," Freedman continued. "We know the truth, and now the public does too," the statement continues. "Justin and his team have nothing to hide, documents do not lie."

Clearly, Baldoni's team had a lot to say about the latest legal filings—but so did Lively's. In response to the defamation suit, Lively's legal team issued a lengthy statement of their own, in which they described the newest lawsuit as both "desperate" and another example of abusive behavior from the actor and which, they ultimately say, "will fail."

Read the full response from Lively's legal team (per Us Weekly) below:

“This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook. This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender,” the statement read. “Wayfarer has opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations.

“They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni. The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success.

“Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault. Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing. In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.”

In December, a source close to Lively told People that she was prepared for what, even then, clearly had what the outlet described as "the potential to be an ugly legal battle"—and she has no intentions of backing down, no matter how ugly that battle gets.

"She still believes she's doing the right thing," the source said of Lively's attitude about the situation. "She's ready to tackle whatever comes her way."