Justin Baldoni‘s attorneys responded Thursday to Blake Energetic‘s try to throw out his defamation swimsuit, arguing {that a} California regulation meant to guard harassment victims doesn’t apply to Energetic’s “fabricated” claims.

The actor-director filed a $400 million lawsuit towards Energetic, his co-star, and her husband Ryan Reynolds in January, arguing that they got down to destroy his profession and hijack his film, “It Ends With Us,” with false allegations of harassment on set.

In a movement to dismiss the swimsuit final month, Energetic’s crew argued that her allegations — which had been first made in a California civil rights criticism that was shared with the New York Instances — are protected by litigation privilege.

Energetic’s attorneys additionally invoked the Defending Survivors from Weaponized Defamation Lawsuits Act, a 2023 regulation that protects harassment accusers from retaliatory defamation fits. The regulation supplies immunity from swimsuit and permits a prevailing defendant to assert attorneys’ charges and damages.

In response on Thursday, Baldoni’s attorneys famous that the safety applies solely to harassment claims with a “affordable foundation” which are made “with out malice.” They argue that Energetic actually made up the allegations, and that subsequently the regulation doesn’t apply.

“Energetic fabricated her allegations of sexual harassment, both wholesale or by exaggerating benign (and never harassing) interactions in a concerted, malicious effort to grab management of the Movie and later to revive her status after a well-publicized sequence of promoting missteps that sullied her status,” Baldoni’s attorneys argue.

Baldoni’s lead lawyer, Bryan Freedman, mentioned in an announcement that Energetic’s crew is making an attempt to set a “harmful precedent” by utilizing the regulation to undermine Baldoni’s proper to sue underneath the First Modification.

“Ms. Energetic and her circle of Hollywood elites can not stop my shoppers from exercising their constitutional proper to petition the courtroom to clear their names from her false and dangerous claims,” Freedman mentioned. “This proper protects not solely Mr. Baldoni and the Wayfarer events on this specific case, however all Individuals sooner or later who’ve false accusations levied towards them and search aid from our justice system. This should cease right here, and we are going to proceed to struggle towards this blatant try to dam entry to the courtroom system and to weaken our nation’s Structure to serve those that are within the place of energy.”

The response additionally contends that the litigation privilege doesn’t apply as a result of Energetic first made the allegations nicely upfront of lodging the civil rights criticism.

Baldoni’s crew additionally cites an interview Energetic gave on the 2022 Forbes Energy Ladies’s summit, which they argue helps their competition that she supposed to grab inventive management of the film. Within the interview, Energetic said that when she was beginning out as as actor, “I knew that they only wished me to indicate up and look cute and stand on just a little pink sticker the place I’m imagined to go and say what I’m imagined to say.

“However I additionally knew that like that wasn’t fulfilling for me — that I wished to be a part of the storytelling . . .. And typically I’d have individuals who actually resented that as a result of they had been like, ‘we simply employed you to be an actor,’” she continued. “I wouldn’t reveal that I truly have to have authorship with the intention to really feel fulfilled. So, I feel that for them, typically that may have felt like a rug pull since you’re like, you’re making an attempt to claim your self into one thing that we didn’t rent you to.”

Baldoni’s crew argues: “That’s precisely what occurred on the set of ‘It Ends With Us.’”

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