NEW YORK, June 13 -- Blake Lively walked into Manhattan federal court eighteen months ago alleging that the director of the movie she was promoting had harassed her on set and then tried to wreck her career. On Friday a judge in the same building told her she had been right enough about one of those claims to win her lawyers' bills, and not right enough to collect a dollar more. The ruling closes the financial loop on the case that consumed her year, and on the way out it asks a sharper question than it answers about how plaintiffs in this kind of fight ever get made whole.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman ordered Justin Baldoni and his company Wayfarer Studios to pay Lively's legal fees relating to Baldoni's failed $400 million defamatio...