Blake Lively Can celebrate a large victory in the courtroom, but a legal expert urges caution.

While a judge rejected Justin Baldoni ‘S Massive Coustest, the legal battle is anything but finished.

With imminent potential amendments and a trial for 2026, a lawyer warns this confrontation in Hollywood, and victory could be ephemeral.

In a dramatic turn on June 9, a federal judge rejected the counter-combination of $ 400 million by Justin Baldoni against Blake Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and her advertising Leslie Sloane.

The judge also rejected the defamation complaint of $ 250 million in Baldoni against The New York Times.

However, two key allegations, a violation of the implicit alliance and criminal interference, can be modified by June 23.

The Lively legal team described the decision “a total victory and a complete justification”, and the actress herself went to Instagram, declaring the prosecution against her “defeat” while linking women’s rights groups.

Yet in a conversation with People magazine,, Lawyer Gregory Doll, who is not involved in the case, warned: “The decision is undoubtedly a hard blow for Baldoni. But the case is far from over. One thing that I have learned several times as a litigant is not to celebrate too early. ”

Although the side of Lively may seem to keep the upper hand now, Doll says that many things can change by the March 2026 trial.

“There is still a lot left in the procedure of the Court of First Instance, including modifications to procedural acts,” he said PEOPLE. “As all the liters know, you sometimes gain everything at the trial only to see your inverted case on appeal.”

Doll has also noted that most civil affairs settled before reaching the trial, a spell that he still predicts here.

“Does this affect Lively’s lever in settlement negotiations? Yes,” he said. “Will Baldoni fight back, in particular by modifying his complaint to try to make sticker interference and implicit alliance complaints?” Yes.”

An assertion that Baldoni could revise the animated accuses and Reynolds, both WME customers, to put pressure on the agency to abandon Baldoni, an allegation that WME denied.

The second concerns the claim of Baldoni according to which Lively did not act in good faith under their contract “it ends with us”.

As for the defamation pursuit against The New York TimesDoll thinks he should never succeed. “This combination was more a public relations decision to disseminate their history to the public,” he said.

Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, retaliated on the victory tour of the Lively team. “Livatively and the foreseeable declaration of victory of his team is false,” he said in a statement on June 10.

Freedman continued: “The allegations of Lively are not more true today than they were yesterday, and with the facts on our side, we advance with the same confidence as we had when Ms. Lively and her cohorts launched this battle and we are impatiently awaiting her next deposition, which I take.”

Once Baldoni deposits his amendments, it is likely that the Lively Soumetra team another request in rejection.

However, the final verdict can only be reached when the trial ends in 2026 or the parties settled behind closed doors.

Judge Lewis Liman rejected the counter-combination of $ 400 million by Justin Baldoni against Lively, Reynolds and The New York TimesJudging that his declarations were protected by a legal privilege.

“The Wayfarer parties have not alleged that Lively is responsible for declarations other than the declarations of his CRD complaint, which are privileged,” he said by Breath.

The judge added that there was no proof Reynolds, the publicist Leslie Sloane, or the Times acted with a doubt in terms of defamation.

He also noted: “Times had no obvious reason to promote the version of Lively events.”

The complaint was completely rejected.