“This lawsuit is a profound abuse of the legal process that has no place in federal court,” her lawyers Mike Gottlieb and Esra Hudson said in a statement to Deadline on Thursday. “California law now expressly prohibits suing victims who make the decision to speak out against sexual harassment or retaliation, whether in a lawsuit or in the press. This meritless and retaliatory lawsuit runs head first into three legal obstacles, including the litigation, fair report, and sexual harassment privileges, the latter of which contains a mandatory fee shifting provision that will require the likes of billionaire Steve Sarowitz, Wayfarer Studios, and others that brought frivolous defamation claims against Ms. Lively to pay damages. In other words, in an epic self-own, the Wayfarer Parties’ attempt to sue Ms. Lively ‘into oblivion’ has only created more liability for them, and deservedly so, given what they have done.”
In a separate statement, a spokesperson for Lively said, “The painful reality is that Ms. Lively is not alone in being sued for defamation after speaking up about being sexually harassed at work. While Ms. Lively has suffered greatly by speaking up and pursuing legal claims, it is important for other people to know that they have protections, and that there is a specific law that expressly protects them from being silenced or financially ruined by a defamation lawsuit because they had the courage to speak up.”
Lively’s motion to dismiss follows a similar filing from her husband earlier this week, which argued that that the whole Nicepool situation is “thin-skinned outrage over a movie character” and “does not even pretend to be tied to any legal claims.” Baldoni’s case against Reynolds “appears to be based on Mr. Reynolds allegedly privately calling Mr. Baldoni a ‘predator,’ but here is the problem: that is not defamation unless they can show that Mr. Reynolds did not believe that statement to be true,” Gottlieb and Hudson said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. “The complaint doesn’t allege that, and just the opposite, the allegations in the complaint suggest that Mr. Reynolds genuinely believes Mr. Baldoni is a predator.”
