Lively v. Wayfarer Studios LLC

Post-dismissal fee ruling, not a verdict: Judge Liman granted Lively’s §47.1 motion only in part—$363,245.40 in fees and $44,206.35 in costs. Nobody won the case today; this was the court deciding who pays the lawyers. The ask was north of $8 million; the award is about five percent, a 95% haircut. When a petition comes back looking like a witness-protection identity, the problem is not arithmetic, it is the business model. Section 47.1 pays a prevailing defamation defendant for successfully defending the defamation claim—full stop—not for every civil-extortion, implied-covenant, and interference claim that happened to share a caption. The court refused to cover the civil extortion, implied covenant, and interference claims that just happened to share a caption. What the court did Willkie partners at $2,795 an hour survived fine. What died was the cast of thousands: 82 timekeepers, bios for only eleven. The an expert declaration instead of invoices, and heavily redacted entries; 'revise legal memo into XX' is a Mad Lib, not a billing narrative. The court benchmarked: doubled the Times' $181,622.70 figure. the GBX reputation report and Westlaw charges were unrecoverable. Procedurally, the June 2025 dismissal was with prejudice as to the defamation claim, with leave to amend limited to two tort claims that were never pursued. The Epoch Times got the ruling right added the Times as a defendant in the amended complaint and mischaracterized the scope of the dismissal.