Entertainment · The Record
Baldoni and Wayfarer ask judge to deny Blake Lively's $7,495,526 fee request
The opposition asks for the fee motion to be thrown out in full, or cut sharply. The figure in it works out to roughly $1,060 an hour across 82 timekeepers.
Global News, reporting on the opposition brief filed on behalf of Justin Baldoni, the actor and director, and Wayfarer Studios, quoted the filing's central sentence: "Lively claims that she is entitled to a stunning $7,495,526 in attorney's fees for 7,070.20 hours billed by no fewer than 82 timekeepers, to obtain the dismissal of a single defamation claim at the pleading stage."
ABC News, in a July report on that same filing, said the brief asks that "her fee motion should be denied in its entirety" and, in the alternative, that the court "sharply reduce" what it awards. The rest of the argument is bookkeeping. As quoted by Global News and by that ABC News report, the brief says no billing statements or comparable records accompany the demand, and that the request does not separate out the work done on the defamation claim from the rest of the case. It points to lawyers doubling up at the same hearings and to charges for counsel conferring and strategizing internally. Blake Lively is the actor who was the defendant in that defamation claim.
Forbes, in a report dated July 14, 2026, described the request as an "extraordinary sum" and put the hours at "about 20 times the number of hours courts have found reasonable in comparable defamation cases." The excerpt of that report Daily Pol worked from does not show whether Forbes was quoting the brief or writing in its own voice, so both phrases are credited to Forbes here.
The record: what the statute actually provides
California Civil Code Section 47.1, as published by the California Legislature, says a prevailing defendant in a covered defamation action "shall be entitled to their reasonable attorney's fees and costs for successfully defending themselves in the litigation." That is mandatory language, and it is only the first item in the sentence. The same sentence goes on to add treble damages for harm caused by the defamation action, punitive damages available under Section 3294, and then a closing catch-all: "or any other relief otherwise permitted by law." Four categories, one sentence.
ABC News reported in June that the court denied Lively's claim for punitive damages while holding that she was entitled to attorneys' fees under Section 47.1. That accounts for two of the four categories. None of the six documents Daily Pol reviewed for this piece states what became of the treble-damages component the statute puts between them. That is not a claim that the court ignored it - it is a gap in the public reporting, and it is settled by reading the order on the docket rather than by reading coverage of it.
The arithmetic nobody has run
Take the brief's own two numbers as Global News quotes them. Divide $7,495,526 by 7,070.20 hours and the blended rate is about $1,060 an hour. Divide those hours by the 82 timekeepers the brief counts and the average is roughly 86 hours each - about two working weeks per person. Daily Pol performed both calculations; neither figure appears in any of the coverage reviewed.
The brief's own benchmark is the newspaper. Global News quotes it saying The New York Times "is seeking $181,000 in a fee request filed in state court for its motion to dismiss precisely the same defamation claim." Against that, $7,495,526 is roughly 41 times as much. Two cautions travel with that ratio, and they matter: the Times figure is a pending request in state court, not money awarded, and nothing in the material reviewed says how or whether that request was decided. The 41 is also not the same measure as Forbes's 20 - Forbes's multiple is hours against comparable cases, this one is dollars against a single pending request.
One housekeeping note on the numbers, because the coverage looks inconsistent and is not. Where reports refer to a $7.5 million demand, that rounding is the brief's own phrasing: the identical sentence appears in both the Global News report and the July ABC News report. The precise figures - $7,495,526 and 7,070.20 hours - come from the brief as well.
What the June ruling did not decide
Section 47.1 applies to a person who had a reasonable basis to file a complaint of sexual assault, harassment or discrimination, whether or not one was ever filed, and it privileges a communication made without malice. Those are the conditions the court was applying when, per ABC News's June report, it found "Ms. Lively brought her claims in good faith, that there was no evidence she acted with malice, and that she is the prevailing defendant under Section 47.1."
Read as analysis grounded in that statutory text: a finding of no malice is a finding about a speaker's state of mind and her status in the litigation. It is not a finding that the underlying allegations are true. The reverse holds too - a defamation claim dismissed at the pleading stage has not been found false, only insufficient as pleaded. And the amount remains open. The entitlement is decided; the number is not.
Two readings of the same order
Willkie Farr & Gallagher published a June 2026 statement on its own news page calling the outcome "The first time a prevailing defendant has been awarded fees and costs under the statute." That is a law firm's announcement of a result, not a court document, and it should be weighed as such.
ABC News's June report also carried a flatly narrower description: "Ms. Lively was only awarded limited attorney fees for a single claim as part of a case that lasted only a matter of months, nothing more." The excerpt Daily Pol reviewed attaches no speaker to that sentence, so this piece does not assign it to any party.
As analysis: the two sentences are not necessarily in conflict. A first-of-its-kind award under a statute enacted recently can still be a narrow one, and both descriptions could survive a reading of the order. Which is the point - the adjectives are free, and the docket is the only thing that settles them.
A checkable prediction
On the record as it stands, the opposition asks for denial in full or a sharp cut, and nothing in the reviewed material shows any party asking the court for more than Lively requested. Daily Pol therefore predicts: if the court enters a fee amount in this case on or before December 31, 2026, that amount will be below $7,495,526. An entered figure at or above $7,495,526 by that date refutes it.
Sourcing, comment and disclosure
Daily Pol did not read the underlying filings. Every passage of brief language here is quoted at second hand through Global News, ABC News and Forbes, which agree on the figures and the wording. Two separate ABC News reports are used and distinguished above: a June report on the fee-entitlement ruling, and a July report on the opposition filing. The statutory text is quoted from the California Legislature's own publication of Section 47.1.
This piece carries no comment from Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios or Willkie Farr & Gallagher. On a story making negative financial claims about named living people, a Daily Pol editor documents the request for comment before publication, and any response received will be added here.
Disclosure: Daily Pol has no financial relationship with any party, studio or law firm named in this piece.