When Justin Baldoni emerged grinning from a black van during a break from the rain at the Aug. 6 premiere of It Ends with Us in New York City, his co-star Blake Lively was nowhere to be seen. A private dispute between the actors was escalating, with Lively (and other cast members) declining to join him for any promotional appearances; she planned to arrive at the premiere once he’d left the red carpet. But one person who was present as Baldoni lingered for a few minutes on the Broadway pavement, taking selfies with fans, was his low-profile partner in Wayfarer Studios, the production company behind the movie: the billionaire founder of payroll software firm Paylocity, Steve Sarowitz.

Justin Baldoni (left) and Steve Sarowitz (right) at the Aug. 6 NYC premiere of their Wayfarer Studios film, It Ends With Us. According to a lawsuit filed by the firm, Blake Lively had their team "quickly ushered away" after the pictures were taken and then "relegated to a separate theater" to view the movie.

Dressed in a navy suit, slim and six-foot-six, he hovered near the back of the group. Later that evening, Lively alleges in a complaint leaked in mid-December and again in a lawsuit filed on New Year’s Eve, Sarowitz said to an unspecified audience “that he was prepared to spend $100 million to ruin the lives of Ms. Lively and her family.” When asked to comment, Sarowitz’s lawyer Bryan Freedman confirmed that his client is prepared to spend whatever necessary to defend Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and himself.

Lively claims in the lawsuit against Wayfarer, Baldoni, Sarowitz and associates that Baldoni (who also directed the film) sexually harassed her on set, and that he and the Wayfarer team then worked to tank her public reputation after she spoke up about the mistreatment. She names Sarowitz a handful of times in the filing and accuses him—the studio’s main financer—of bankrolling the smear campaign.

The Wayfarer team responded with a lawsuit of its own on the same day, Dec. 31, against the New York Times—which first reported the details of Lively’s civil rights complaint—arguing that the outlet published a misleading story without the context that would have exonerated them. They shared text message evidence that wasn’t published in its entirety and claimed that the backlash against Lively had been organic, spurred largely by her “tone-deaf” promotion of the film, which portrays domestic violence.

Sarowitz remains a fierce defender of the studio and of Baldoni. In his first public statement about the legal battle, Sarowitz emailed Forbes that “the actual harassment and smear campaign both........

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