There are days when a courthouse feels like a theatre. Not inside,where the language is clipped and procedural, but on the pavement, where cameras wait and narratives begin forming before a single word is spoken.
On Wednesday morning in lower Manhattan, the unexpected headline was colour.
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, once collaborators onIt Ends with Usand now locked in a bruising legal battle, arrived for a court-ordered settlement conference dressed in near-matching tones.
Lively, 38, wore an oversized olive-green suit, softened by a pale pink collared shirt. Baldoni, 42, stepped out in a long olive wool coat, wrapped with a blush-toned scarf. If it was coincidence, and it almost certainly was, it was the sort that feels scripted.
Two adversaries. One courthouse. Coordinated.
It would be comic if the context were not so serious.
The settlement conference is a routine step in federal civil litigation, a moment designed to test whether compromise is possible before the full machinery of trial is engaged. Their trial date stands at 18 May in New York. No settlement was announced.
But the case itself is anything but routine.
Lively has accused Baldoni, who directed and co-starred in the 2024 romance dramaIt Ends with Us,along with the film's producers, of sexual harassment and of orchestrating a campaign to damage her reputation after she raised concerns about working conditions.
Baldoni has emphatically denied the allegations. He previously filed a $400 million countersuit for extortion and defamation, which was dismissed.
Source: International Business Times UK
